


burn it up (photosynthesize and drink up the sunrise)

by nirav



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 54,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27427606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirav/pseuds/nirav
Summary: She could have stayed here forever, fighting house fires and responding to traffic accidents.  She sniffs and lets herself be buried in a bear hug, crushed between the familiar smell of aftershave and firehoses.  She could have stayed here forever, but she has a plane ticket to California and the small life she’s built here already packed up, promises she made herself still left to keep.
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 67
Kudos: 287
Collections: Bumbleby Big Bang 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My entry for the 2020 Bumbleby Big Bang, which is absolutely not complete without [the absolutely incredible artwork](https://turgles-art.tumblr.com/post/634231958808985600/heres-my-piece-for-the-bumblebybigbang-my#notes) done by [turgles-art](https://turgles-art.tumblr.com/)!

> _pyrolytic:_ decomposition or transformation of a compound caused by heat

When she joined, she had nothing. Four years old and balanced on her mother's hip, entranced by the sound of her father's voice, with no concern beyond the immediate circle of her family and no possessions beyond the clothes on her back and the stuffed bear clutched in one arm, she hummed happily as her parents founded the White Fang, the family she would grow up in, a small collective of environmental activism and communal change that meant, for a toddler, more hands to hold her and family to love her.

When she joined, she had nothing. When she left, she had less, stealing out of the house in the middle of the night with nothing but a bruise on her cheek and a knot of guilt dragging at her spine. Her parents' work has become twisted, the good name of the Fang dragged into something violent and dangerous, something more synonymous with hurt than progress, and she's been plotting her escape from the splintered off version of the Fang she'd followed Adam to three years ago for weeks.

Adam sleeps light, but she steps lighter, and she leaves everything-- her clothes, her books, her stuffed bear-- behind. With just her dusty Social Security card shoved into one pocket and the wad of cash she's been stockpiling under a floorboard for two years-- initially for when Adam inevitably needed bail money, then for when she’d eventually need it for herself-- in the other, she sets off at a tiptoe, and then a walk, and then a run, summer air warm in her lungs.

When she joined, she had nothing. When she left, she had less. Her lungs burn as she runs, and she grins wide into the dark as she settles into a jog, and then a familiar sub-seven pace along the road, because for the first time in years, she feels light enough to breathe.

* * *

She has a GED, barely two grand in cash, and not a friend in the world, but she hitches her way to the closest town with a concerned elderly couple and then buys a bus ticket to Portland from there. It’s not ideal, but it’s affordable, and she spends half of her money on six months for a shared room in a hippie hostel that smells of an unfortunate mix of patchouli and stale sweat and most of the rest on study materials, and keeps her head down until she can test her way into the next round of entries in the fire academy. She has to charm her way through the mental health assessments and convince the people at the hostel who she’d rather not interact with, at the diner she’s waiting tables at, to be character references, but it’s worth every faked smile and fluttered eyelash when she gets the verbal admission. 

It’s not much, but it’s a start, and she doesn’t breathe until she has the admission letter in hand. She folds it with steady hands and steady breaths, because she’s been reeling for years but her body has always refused to admit it, and she slides the paper back into the envelope and laces up her shoes and sets out for a run.

* * *

When she joined the Portland Fire Department, she had nothing. When she leaves, she has something she could almost call a family. They throw her a party and also throw her into a dunk tank, and it gives her an excuse to pretend she isn’t tearing up, because she’d left the White Fang, left Adam, running on the side of the road with nothing but her Social Security card and some cash and set her sights on making up for the damage she’d done, but in the process had found people-- good people, kind people, people who she lived with and cooked with and trusted with her life-- who she grew to care for, and now she’s leaving them behind.

“To Belladonna!” The captain yells out, holding his beer out and only sloshing half of it out of the glass and onto the driveway. Their shift is off duty and they’ve all been drinking for hours, and Blake’s pleasantly blasted, her limbs loose and skin buzzing, and her head lolls back on her neck when the rest of the team yells out good-natured boos. “Leaving us to go pop a squat in the woods--”

“Wildland firefighter!” Sun interjects, flinging an arm around her shoulders.

“--and fall out of helicopters!” The captain carries on.

“Helitack crews!” That one garners a round of cheers, and Blake drags her head back down so she can bury her face in her hands.

“Shut up, all of you,” the captain says with a huff, and he tilts his beer towards her. “Blake, it won’t be the same without you in the house. But we couldn’t be prouder to have someone from this house joining helitack, and they couldn’t be luckier to have you.” He raises his beer again. “We also couldn’t be luckier to have you not trying to cook in our kitchen anymore. Seriously.”

A laugh cracks out of her, and she hugs him, because it’s better than the way she wants to cry, because she’ll miss him. She could have stayed here forever, fighting house fires and responding to traffic accidents. She sniffs and lets herself be buried in a bear hug from Sun and Neptune, crushed between the familiar smell of aftershave and firehoses that always clings to them. She could have stayed here forever, but she has a plane ticket to California and the small life she’s built here already packed up, promises she made herself still left to keep.

* * *

She keeps moving forward. The helitack work is thrilling, skidding down ropes to attack wildfires a whole new world from breaking down doors to suburban homes with kitchen fires, the fires bigger and the stakes somehow just the same, but the elite crew is never a family the way her house in Portland was. It’s a stepping stone more than the PFD ever was, and she keeps her head down and puts in her hours and, the second she can, puts in her application for the Missoula smokejumper base-- the most elite of firefighters, the ones who parachute out of planes into the middle of nowhere and stop fires before they spread, stop the fires the rest of the world is blissfully unaware could rip through trees and houses if left unattended-- and is rejected immediately.

It doesn’t phase her. Blake is stubborn-- she ran away with a splinter cell that turned full eco-terrorist when she was _twelve_ , she knows how to be stubborn-- and she files the rejection away and immediately submits another application. And then another. And another. She knew the odds going in-- less than five percent-- and also the importance of persistence, and she knows she can outlast them. 

She keeps moving forward. She excels with the helitack crew, rappelling out of helicopters across California to put out wildfires, accumulating hard-won burn scars and fractures as she does, collecting her rejections from the smokejumpers in turn with her steady hands until the day she gets an acceptance instead.

Blake stares down at the email for long seconds, uncertain for the first time in years, and then shakes her head and laces up her shoes so she can go for a run. She has her notice with her helitack crew to put in and six weeks before she has to report to training in Missoula, plane tickets to book and her spartan apartment to pack up, forward momentum to hold and promises left to keep.

* * *

Blake walks into the first day of rookie training at the Missoula base and is, immediately, accosted by a redheaded lightning bolt spilling coffee on her.

“Shit!” she grinds out, because the coffee is _hot_ \-- not enough to burn, but enough to be annoying, and now it’s all over her t-shirt, and also not how she wanted to start her first day. 

“Sorry!” the redhead says cheerfully. “My bad. At least your shirt’s black?” She brushes uselessly and too hard at Blake’s shirt, as if she can flap the wet coffee away, and the force of it nearly sends Blake through a wall.

“Please stop,” Blake says through her teeth. “I-- it’s fine.” She wrangles her t-shirt out of the other woman’s fist and steps around her, unloading her backpack at an empty table and settling down to sit and then immediately closing her eyes when the chair next to her is pulled out. “Really, it’s fine, I--”

“Uh, sorry, I--”

Blake opens her eyes and immediately shuts up, because the redhead’s somehow all the way over on the other side of the room, chattering away at someone else now, and the chair next to her is half pulled out by a blonde woman who’s frozen in place.

“Sorry?” Blake says stupidly, because she’s off on the wrong foot now twice with her classmates, and she wanted today to go _well_.

“I was, um--” She sets the chair back down and rubs at the back of her neck, and Blake frowns down at her own coffee-stained shirt. “I was just going to move this to the other table so I could sit with my sister, actually.”

“Oh,” Blake says. “Of course. Go ahead.”

“No, sorry, it was rude.” She shoves her hands into her pockets and tilts her head, rocking on her heels. “I’m Yang, by the way.”

“What?” Blake immediately curses herself and does her best to school her face into neutrality, because she doesn’t _fluster_ , she doesn’t lose her cool, but she’s off balance on her first day of training and can’t find it in herself to act like a human being. “Oh, sorry. I’m Blake.” 

She pushes halfway up to standing and offers a hand, because it’s the polite thing to do, and Yang seems relieved for something to do, yanking a hand free to shake hers, firm and strong and lingering. It relaxes her, and as Blake settles back down into her chair Yang pulls the other one back out and plops down into it. 

“So,” Yang says cheerfully. “Saw you already met Nora.” She points to the coffee Blake’s wearing on her shirt. 

“Is that her name?” Blake mutters. 

“Yep,” Yang says, popping the _p_. “I ran into her at the gym yesterday. She’s a handful, but she seems like a lot of fun. Said she’s from Nebraska. I cannot believe that Nebraska ever contained anything with that much energy.”

Blake snorts without meaning to and then immediately slaps a hand over her mouth, and Yang glances at her sidelong, grinning sly and knowing. 

“So what’s your deal, then?” She folds her arms over her chest, head tilting and eyes narrowing. “Everyone else is being chatty and social but you’re being all. You know.” She waves one hand towards Blake, gesturing vaguely from her head to her feet, encompassing the tense set to her posture, the cross of her arms, the way she has one knee hooked over the other. 

“What does that mean?” Blake raises an eyebrow, frowning, because Yang’s _right_ , maybe, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Blake has to admit to anything. 

“The only other person here as tense as you is _her_.” Yang juts a thumb over her shoulder to the front of the room to where a woman with white hair is sitting stiffly, alone, ignoring the rest of the rookies, a book open in front of her. Blake stares at her for a long moment, because she doesn’t look big enough to lift an ax, much less swing one, yet she’s sitting in the room with the rest of them with enough imperious disdain oozing out of her than even from just a view of her back Blake can see it. “And I figured out her deal. I don’t know what yours is.”

“Why do you need to?” Blake shifts in her seat-- not uncomfortably, because she’s _comfortable_ , because this is where she’s supposed to be, where she’s been working to be for years-- and uncrosses her arms, folds her hands into her lap in a less defensive posture. 

Yang shrugs, waves one hand casually. “We’re going to work together, right? Don’t we need to trust each other?”

“Assuming we all make it through training,” Blake counters. “One in five fall out, right? And I count a lot more than five in here.” 

“Right,” Yang says drily. “Well--”

The door in the front of the room opens and an instructor walks in, cutting Yang off, and they all snap to attention, scrambling around, and Yang mutters an apology before absconding with the chair. She scuttles off and resettles at a table in front of Blake with, presumably, the sister she mentioned-- shorter, dark red hair, practically vibrating in her seat-- and Blake straightens in her seat. Yang’s bright ponytail flashes in her periphery, but it barely registers as her palms burn, because she’s worked years to get this far and, finally, as they’re hustled outside to see who can load up the hundred-ten pound pack and haul it three miles in less than ninety minutes, she’s here.

* * *

The first day is hard. There’s the packout and then a rest and then, cruelly, a mile and a half run. Yang’s sister-- Ruby, Blake’s learned by that point, cheerful and bright and unfailingly strong based on how much energy she has after the packout-- blasts past Blake’s time by twenty seconds, leaving her gasping on the side of the track and wondering how someone with a stride almost six inches shorter than hers left her so far behind and was barely winded from it.

“Don’t try to keep up with her,” Yang gasps out at her side, slapping at her shoulder in what’s probably meant to be an encouraging way but instead mostly just nearly knocks over because Blake may be plenty strong but Yang is built like a brick shithouse and hits like one to boot. “She’s still got like half the track records at our high school.”

The afternoon is jammed with classes, and Blake can barely keep her focus on the lectures over the way her muscles scream. She shifts uncomfortably in her seat, as subtly as she can, and takes small comfort in the fact that everyone else-- except the tiny white devil, who Blake is still convinced can’t possibly have hit the minimum weight requirement and who won’t speak to anyone and also sits still like a statue except to glare every time someone cracks a joke or mutters a complaint-- is as uncomfortable as she is. 

The first day is hard. The second is harder. She wakes up stiffer than a frozen pipe and twice as miserable, ankles blistered and shoulders aching and every muscle protesting when she tries to sit up.

“Fuck,” she gasps out, flopping back down onto the mattress, and immediately regrets it when pain lances through her entire body at the impact. Today’s going to be so much worse. She peels herself off the mattress with a whimper and it takes every bit of willpower she has to drag herself into the barrack showers, and even more to get her feet into shoes. 

She’s the first one to the training room, and she rewards herself with allowing herself a whine as she settles into a chair, since no one can hear her. She drops her head onto the table once she’s sitting and lets out a sigh, reminds herself that this is worth it-- it _is_ , because she’s good at this, because she loves it, even if she doesn’t have to do it, because it needs to be done-- and closes her eyes, relaxes into the table, grants herself a moment to rest in the quiet--

The door opens and she bolts upright, and immediately groans because her entire body protests, and then again, quieter, because pausing in the doorway is the only person in the entire training program she doesn’t want to see.

“Hello.” Even this early, her white hair is neatly tied back, her clothes perfectly pressed, as if they aren’t about to go run through the mud all morning.

“Hi,” Blake says, for lack of anything better to say. 

She doesn’t say anything else, hands on her hips, and Blake breaks first, looking past her shoulder to the door. It’s too early for a staring contest with someone whose name she doesn’t even know. Blake sighs and focuses instead on stretching, because it’s something to do, and watches idly as coffee is set to brew and the other woman busies herself with organizing the containers of sugar packets and creamer pods neatly.

“Let me guess,” Blake says before she can stop herself. “You were on a hotshots crew, right?”

She leans against the table, arms folded over her chest, watching as the last of the sugar packets are turned so they’re right side up and label-out and then set in the proper containers before the woman turns around.

“Lucky guess?” she says, mirroring Blake’s posture. 

“Organized, structured, precise.” Blake shrugs. “Educated guess.” She takes a breath, shrugs again. “I’m Blake.”

There’s a long silence, long enough that Blake starts to wonder why she bothered trying, even though she knows why she tried-- because they’re meant to be teammates, because they’re meant to work together, to trust each other, to leap out of a plane together and spend hours or days in the middle of the wilderness relying on each other to stop the fires the rest of the world will never know exist-- before she finally gets a response.

“I’m Weiss,” she says eventually.

“Nice to meet you,” Blake says, mouth tilting, because it _is_ , because there’s something interesting about everyone in the training program, all of them, elite firefighters training for thankless careers in obscurity. “Yang mentioned she knew you?”

“She did?” Weiss’s mouth twitches, and Blake can’t tell if it’s a smile because to be perfectly honest Blake can’t tell yet if Weiss knows how to smile. 

“She said she knew what your deal was, at least,” Blake amends.

The door opens again before Weiss can answer and Nora tumbles in, nearly falling on her face, Yang on her heels with Ruby hanging onto her like a spidermonkey. 

“Hey!” Nora yells. “Ooh, coffee.”

“Coffee!” Ruby scrambles off of Yang’s back, elbow cracking into the back of her head as she does. Blake sighs and rubs at her forehead, and across the room Weiss does the same. The door opens again and more trainees pour in, and Blake drops back down into her chair, muscles still protesting, but she’s more awake, less heavy, and Yang settles into a chair at her side.

“Hey,” Yang says simply, elbow prodding at her side lazily.

“Hey.” Blake elbows her back. Ruby appears a moment later, three coffee cups triangled in her hands, and sets them down on the table, only spilling half of them and grinning broadly when Blake thanks her. Blake sips at her coffee silently, listening with half an ear as Ruby and Yang chatter at each other, raising an eyebrow when Weiss settles without a word in the chair at her other side. 

The instructor comes in and claps his hands, yelling about weight room assessments, and Blake groans into her coffee. 

“It’s not all jumping out of planes, is it?” Yang says solemnly, slapping a hand on her shoulder as they file out of the room, and Blake considers punching her because Yang has to know exactly how sore her shoulders are. But then Yang smiles at her, wide and bright, a flashover waiting to happen, and Blake nearly walks into a wall. Yang grins wider and nudges an elbow against hers and squeezes through the door to the weightroom ahead of her, stretching her arms over her head and twisting this way and that, and Blake breathes in deep, flexes her hands, resets her focus. She’s here to work.

She’s paired up to spot Ruby, who’s stronger than she looks, and it’s easy to keep her focus on that: safety is an imperative she can keep her head tied to, always, and her eyes stay tied to the tension in Ruby’s muscles as she lifts, the rhythm of her breathing, the likelihood of her body giving out. It’s easy to keep her focus on keeping Ruby _safe_ , because Blake is a firefighter, and safety is what she does.

It’s harder to keep her focus on herself when she’s got a bar on her shoulders and Yang is deadlifting in the cage straight across from her. Blake knows exactly what she can squat and it’s more than this, but she nearly fails at the bottom of the fifth rep because Yang, apparently, can deadlift an absolutely absurd amount and is right in front of her, doing just that, and _winking_ at her as she does it.

“Whoa, whoa,” Ruby hurries out, hands on the bar, and Blake lets out a huff and rights herself and surges up before Ruby can get a proper hold on the bar.

“I’m fine,” she says. “I’m fine. I just-- weird blister on my ankle from yesterday. It’s messing up my stance.”

“Okay,” Ruby says slowly. Her hands pull back, hovering, and Blake looks to the ceiling and settles, resets, breathes. She thinks of fire and the kernel of guilt still aching in her gut, the one she hasn’t had to draw on in years, the one that helped her see the White Fang for what it had become, and sets back to her reps. She’s here to work.

Later, when their afternoon first aid classes end and the instructors drive them out into the woods and leave them with rations and sleeping bags and tarps and let them know they’ll be sleeping outside until further notice, she’s almost grateful. It’s hard to be distracted when she's sleeping under a plastic sheet in April, the ground cold and the air colder the later into the night it gets.

A week later when they’re dragged out of sleep and given two minutes to eat and then handed axes and pulaskis and set to 24 straight hours of cutting fireline, she’d give anything to be back in the weight room nearly falling on her ass staring at the flex of Yang’s quadriceps. She focuses instead on her own movements, the repetitive push and pull familiar, her time on helitack full of laying firelines. To one side, Ruby is a whirlwind of motion: to the other, Weiss is methodical and stronger than she looks. Yang is more powerful than the three of them combined, knocking out entire small trees from the roots up with single swings, setting the path for the fireline that the rest of them clear the brush out of.

By the time they finish Blake’s sure that sometime in the last ten hours she died and no one was kind enough to tell her. Her back and shoulders have circled past hurting all the way to numbness; she’s beyond tired, beyond exhausted, reaching into a state of giddy adrenaline that assures her she could go for another 24 hours if she needed to. An instructor has to pry the pulaski handle from her hands, her fingers locked into position, forearms cramped for so long she can’t let go, and she can’t even protest as she’s loaded into the backseat of the truck next to Weiss. Yang’s the last one in their truck and even she seems shellshocked and dead on her feet, and the four of them, crammed into what’s technically only three seats, slump into each other, a domino of Ruby slumping into Weiss slumping into Blake slumping into Yang’s side and immediately passing out now that she’s not moving anymore.

She doesn’t remember the ride back to the base in Missoula, but at some point she wakes up on one of the cots in the barracks. The room is full of the sounds of sleep-- Nora snores loudly, and Yang snores quietly, and Weiss moves constantly in her sleep-- but there are six empty beds, neatly made and untouched. Blake rolls over and her whole body protests, less a body and more one raw nerve of overworked muscle and blisters, but she manages to flip her pillow over and smile, because six people fell out, and she didn’t.

Yang’s curled on her side on the cot next to her, masses of hair bright even in the dark, and Blake rolls back over to face the other way instead of inspecting the way that she _cares_ that Yang didn’t fall out, either.

* * *

After that, the rest of training slides by like water. Compared to the blur of exhaustion that they survived, the pack tests and calisthenics, landing simulators and parachute training, all feel simpler. By the time they make it to the end, no one’s managed to survive without Nora spilling coffee on them at least once, and Blake has learned that Weiss is from New York, that Ruby and Yang had started with the Sacramento Fire Department before shifting to wildland and that Ruby was accepted into the program a year ago and somehow managed to defer her acceptance until Yang got one as well. Blake’s the fastest at rappelling down a tree, but Ruby can climb one faster than anyone; Yang isn’t as fast on the timed runs without weight but has the best time of the whole group when they have to haul the hundred-pound packs across rough terrain, and Weiss was the only one who walked away from their first real jump without a scratch. Nora, incapable of keeping a cup of coffee upright for more than ninety seconds at a time, is somehow better than all of them with both a chainsaw and at sewing a chute, and more than once Blake has to go to her, grudgingly, for help as she struggles with sewing her own parachutes. 

Weeks go by and then, suddenly, Blake blinks and she’s a smokejumper. Training ends with little fanfare-- a certification, a handshake, an official assignment to the Missoula base along with Yang and Ruby and Weiss, Nora to the Yellowstone base to be near her boyfriend-- and then suddenly Blake’s hit on one side with the whirlwind that is Nora and on the other by Ruby, and in the background somewhere Weiss is yelling because Yang hauled her up on one shoulder and is saying something about going into town for beers. There’s a low hum in Blake’s ears, a ten year old echo of sparks flying off a sledgehammer and landing on dry ground, Adam shoving away her concern, the news a day later of a wildfire out of control, and the paper that officially certifies her one of the most singular firefighters in the country wrinkles in her hands.

“Hey!” Yang appears in front of her, disheveled from manhandling Weiss around like they weren’t all supposedly the newly-declared elite, bright like a flashover, and Blake shakes her head, shakes herself back into the present, pastes a smile onto her face. “Come on, let’s go, let’s get a beer. Ruby’s driving.”

“What--”

“She doesn’t drink.” Yang hooks a hand through her elbow, turning her towards the doors, and slings an arm around Weiss’s shoulders as well, ignoring her protests with a huff. “Hates the taste. But she _will_ hustle you in darts shamelessly after you’re a few rounds in, though, so keep an eye out for that.” 

Blake hums noncommittally, glancing down at the certificate in her hand again. “Noted,” she says drily. “I hate darts anyways.”

“Coward,” Yang says, cheerful and dangerous, and it burns down Blake’s spine like a line of accelerant. She lets go of her hold on both Blake and Weiss and shoves them towards the training barracks. “We’re leaving in twenty, go get pretty!”

* * *

The bar is somehow both larger than Blake had expected and still cramped. There’s space enough for something approximating a dance floor, but it’s mostly crammed with people drinking instead of dancing. Nora had laid eyes on the mechanical bull and disappeared immediately, and the rest of them had landed a table in a corner. Blake hasn’t moved since she claimed her chair, working her way slowly through a beer and watching with increasing interest as Yang loses miserably at darts to Ruby.

Across the table, Weiss is overdressed and her beer is mostly untouched, and she’s been texting nearly the whole time since they arrived. Blake props her chin in her hand, pulling her attention away from the way Yang’s entire body seems to flex when she throws a dart, broad shoulders on display in the criminally cute yellow dress she’d worn to the bar, and focuses on Weiss instead, rolling through the information she knows about Weiss as a distraction from the ripple of muscle in Yang’s shoulder. They’ve been in training cargoes and t-shirts for weeks, covered in dirt and mud and sweat and she’d been sure nothing could surprise her about her teammates--once you learn how someone wields both a chainsaw and a sewing needle, there are few gaps left to fill-- but then she’d nearly walked into a door when Yang had stepped out in a sundress, broad shoulders on display, one shoulder covered in flowering tattoos the crept around to her back and wound down around her scapula, edging along her spine.

She’s learned a lot about each of them throughout training, filing information away as she does, because she has to jump out of a plane with these people, spend hours or days at a time with them in the middle of nowhere, trust them with her life. Their quirks could save her life. She knows that Weiss grew up in New York and that she drinks her coffee black, that she’s physically incapable of complaining, that she was on a hotshot crew and was strict and precise even by their exacting standards. She knows that Weiss is uptight and unyielding and standoffish, that she has no patience for Ruby’s enthusiasm or Yang’s jokes or Nora’s reckless energy, that she offered help without hesitation and never took the last of the coffee even if she hadn’t had any yet, that except for possibly Yang she was Blake’s first choice to jump out of a plane into a wildfire with right now.

Blake knows almost as much about Weiss as she knows about any of the rest of her now-teammates, but she doesn’t know a thing to say to her in a social situation, and she stares down into her beer stupidly instead.

“Hey!” Yang and Ruby drop back down at the table, wide smiles and bright eyes alike, jostling the both of them back to attention. “I definitely won the last round. Don’t let Ruby tell you otherwise.”

Blake cranes her head around to look at the dartboard and the scattered collection of blue darts, and then back to Yang, one eyebrow raised, and Yang clears her throat loudly.

“Not a word from you, Belladonna,” she says, and takes a long swallow from her beer, one hand shoving at Ruby lazily and nearly dislodging her hat in the process. 

“Weiss,” Ruby says with a huff as she straightens her hat. “Stop texting. We’re celebrating!” 

“Is that what we’re doing?” Weiss drawls out, finally looking up from her phone. “I thought your sister was just losing miserably at darts.”

“Excuse _you_ ,” Yang says with a gasp. She slaps a hand over her heart. “I was losing _beautifully_ , thank you very much. Which you would know, if you’d been paying attention, ma’am.” She reaches out and grabs for Weiss’s phone, narrowly missing when Weiss yanks it out of her reach with an offended yelp.

“Who’re you texting so much, hm?” Ruby props her chin in her hands, eyes wide, swerving to one side to avoid Yang’s elbow as she keeps trying to grab the phone without looking away from Weiss. “Boyfriend? Is it a boyfriend?”

Blake leans back in her chair, sipping on her beer, watching with interest as Yang keeps trying to grab Weiss’s phone and Weiss keeps dodging, Ruby watching wide-eyed and bright. It’s warm in the bar, the first edges of summer reaching in through the open windows, and she’d rolled up her sleeves the minute they walked in; the further into her drink she gets, the looser she feels, after almost two months of training and no alcohol, and it’s easy, halfway into the beer, to watch three of the most elite firefighters in the country act like idiots and enjoy it.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Weiss says, imbuing enough distaste into five words that Blake nearly chokes on her beer and Yang laughs, big and loud, lighting up the whole bar. 

“That’s way too much of a denial,” she says, still laughing. 

“I _don’t_ ,” Weiss says.

“Girlfriend, then?” Yang raises an eyebrow, challenging, and Weiss huffs out a sigh and rolls her eyes. 

“Definitely a girlfriend,” Ruby says firmly. 

“You’re obnoxious,” Weiss informs her, pointing at Ruby and then at Yang. “All of you.”

“Aw, come on.” Yang drops an arm around her shoulders with a sigh and grins wide across the table at Blake when Weiss makes a noise of disgust but doesn’t try to move away. “What about Blake? She’s nice and quiet. You can’t call her obnoxious.”

She winks at Blake, crackling like a live wire, like a flashover on the verge of combustion, and Blake burns and focuses on her beer instead of the way Yang’s arm around Weiss’s shoulders draws a clean line from her bicep up to the bottom edges of the tattoo, black inkwork and contrasting floral lines disappearing along her deltoid and under the curtain of her hair. Blake is here because of thousands of acres of lost wildland and lost homes, a debt owed and a repayment to make, not to make friends or eyes at the well-built lines of charm and muscle that make up Yang Xiao Long.

“All of you,” Weiss says primly, even if the snide edge to her voice doesn’t reach her eyes, and it slices through Blake’s uncertainty and she’s drawn into the way they all laugh. She’s not here to make friends, but she _is_ here to be part of a team. _This_ team.

“So,” Yang says, arm still around Weiss casually, and she pokes at her cheek and grins when Weiss slaps at her hand. “Tell us about her!”

“What’s her name?” Ruby says. “Does she live here? How’d you meet?”

Blake leans her elbows on the table, tilting forward over her beer, because in nearly two months of slogging through mud and rain and heat, diving out of planes, climbing trees and putting out fires and swinging axes, she’s never seen Weiss _blush_ before. 

“I think you hit a nerve,” she says, and Ruby crowds forward next to her, pressed against her side and nodding solemnly.

“I think we did,” she stage whispers. 

“I hate all of you,” Weiss mutters. Her phone buzzes in her hand, screen lighting up, and Yang yelps victoriously and grabs it out of her hand.

“Is this her?” She holds the screen up, eyes wide and illuminated by the bright screen. “Oh, come on, you can barely see her face--”

“Give that back--”

“Hey, share!” Ruby yanks the phone out of her hand, upending Blake’s beer in the process, and Blake only barely manages to dodge the spill, chair clattering out behind her as she leaps back. Beer drips off the table and the rest of them freeze like a record scratch, Ruby leaning half over the table and Yang holding Weiss practically in a headlock. “Oops?”

“Honestly, Ruby,” Yang says, for all the world a scolding older sister, even as she keeps her headlock hold on Weiss, who seems to drive her elbow into Yang’s ribs under the table. “Pretty sure you owe Blake a beer now.”

“It’s fine,” Blake says, even though she does want another beer, but Ruby’s already bolting up to the bar, and she sighs and sits in Ruby’s vacated chair. “I’d settle for getting to see Weiss’s hot girlfriend.”

“Oh my God,” Weiss says indignantly, pulling her way out of Yang’s headlock with a huff and slapping at her arm. She yanks her phone out of Yang’s hand and unlocks it, thumbing through pictures for a long moment and then offering her phone to Blake, mouth set in a thin line.

Blake takes the phone and then also steals her untouched beer, taking a slow sip before she peers down at the screen, and then blinks, looking up at Weiss and then back at the picture on the screen of Weiss curled into the side of a redheaded woman, the two of them dressed glamorously but barefoot and drinking fast food milkshakes, sitting on the hood of an expensive car with a corporate logo barely visible. “Wait, is that--”

“Yes,” Weiss says flatly.

“What?” Yang says. She grabs for the phone again. “No way.”

“Yes,” Weiss says again, sighing. “Are you done?”

“Done with what?” Ruby reappears with a fresh round of beers and a pitcher of water. “Ta da!” She drags a chair around and plops down at the head of the table, skewing the circle odd-ways. 

“Weiss is dating Pyrrha Nikos!” Yang bursts out, shoving Weiss’s phone into Ruby’s face. 

“Wheaties box Pyrrha Nikos?” Ruby says. She nearly upends the entire table. “Super G gold medalist Pyrrha Nikos? Downhill legend Pyrrha Nikos?” 

“Please be done.” Weiss rubs at her forehead. “Yes. That’s her.”

“You’re dating the greatest skier in the history of ever and you never _told_ us?” Ruby’s nearly vibrating in her seat. Blake raises an eyebrow at her, glancing over towards Yang, who’s laughing into her hand, and moves the beers further away from Ruby. “How did you _meet_ her?”

Weiss sighs and claims one of the beers, taking a small sip and then a larger one. “We met at an-- event. After her first Olympics.”

“An _event_ ,” Yang says slowly. 

“An event,” Weiss throws back. 

“You’re being weird,” Blake says, and Yang points at her without looking away from Weiss.

“You are.”

“I am not!”

“She is not!” Ruby says indignantly, and then pauses. “Actually, you are.” 

“Hey!”

“Nice try, Rubes,” Yang says, patting her on the arm. “Come on, Weiss. Spit it out. Teammates, remember?”

Weiss sighs and rubs at her forehead, and Blake leans her chin into her hand. Around them, the bar carries on, loud in the summer air, and Blake watches with growing interest as Weiss works her way rapidly through almost an entire pint before she speaks again.

“We met at an event,” she says again, staring with great interest into her mostly-empty glass, one finger tapping carefully against the rim. “In New York. In May.”

“Uh huh,” Yang drawls out. 

“On a Monday,” Weiss says carefully. “The first Monday in May.”

There’s a long second of silence that drags out over the table, confusion setting heavy in Blake’s head, but then Yang sits up straight so quickly the whole table rattles.

“The-- you _what_ ,” she yells out and then slaps a hand over her mouth. “The-- you-- the _Met_ Gala?”

“Yes,” Weiss says miserably, slumping in her seat.

“How did you end up at the--” Ruby cuts herself off, one hand slapping down on the table. “Oh my God! You’re Weiss _Schnee_ , aren’t you!”

Weiss nods, miserable and flushing scarlet, and a dull roar builds in Blake’s head, pressure heaving behind her chest, the half-hidden logo from the picture of Weiss and Pyrrha suddenly growing into a familiar one that’s lived locked away with her guilt and drive for years and years--

_“Hurry up,” Adam mutters, hand locked tight around her arm, tight enough to hurt, tight enough to bruise, tight enough that she bites down on the inside of her cheek until she can taste blood. She nearly falls trying to match her stride to his longer legs, the bag slung over her back too heavy, but she hurries as she’s told, dry leaves and brush crunching under her boots._

_It’s dark, the sun long gone past the horizon, but there’s no reprieve for the dry heat, and the pace they’re keeping has sweat dragging down her spine and dripping into her eyes. He’d told her this would be fast, he’d told it would be easy, he’d told it would be some graffiti and vandalism. The White Fang’s protest and policy approach had done little to provoke change, he’d said, and they’d splintered off to drive real change forward: companies like SDC would only listen to people who hit their wallets, and vandalizing the machinery set to start constructing their next refineries and pipelines would do that._

_He’d said it would be easy. He didn’t say it would involve taking a sledgehammer to backhoes and cranes and generators, sparks flying with every contact. She’d stomped out every spark she could see, certain she got them all, and on the way home she’d felt sure it had been a good night because the tens of thousands of dollars of property damage wouldn’t_ stop _SDC, but it would cost them, and it might make them think twice, at least for a moment._

_Ten hours later, when the fires had spread, no one had been sure when they started, but by the time they had ripped through three towns she was certain and by the time it was officially determined they’d started at an SDC warehouse site and millions in fines were levied against the company, she’d already planned her escape, guilt setting her towards a career as a firefighter._

\--and her beer glass skids out of her hand, wobbling on the table and sloshing beer out, and it’s only Yang, faster than someone her size should be able to move, grabbing it that keeps it from knocking over entirely.

“You people are a literal hazard,” Weiss mutters. “Jesus.”

“Sorry,” Blake mumbles. “I--phone buzzed. It surprised me. I just need to--”

She cuts off and fumbles with her phone, digging it out of the pocket of her jeans and then pushing up to her feet and out of the bar. She doesn’t breathe until she’s outside, around the corner of the building and slumping against the cool brick. 

It’s been nearly ten years since she made the decision to leave the White Fang, leave Adam, since she realized how far astray she’d gone and watched a fire she helped start spread across thousands of acres and ruin hundreds of lives. It’s burned into her bones, the way she’d been so sure she was doing something right and how it had twisted into something that could have killed so many innocent people. She hadn’t felt guilty, necessarily, when SDC was hit with the fines for the fire, because SDC was a terrible company, but then: then there was Weiss.

“Hey.”

Her eyes snap open and the swirl of confusion and guilt in her stomach contract and twist into something entirely different because Yang’s standing there, hands behind her back and concern plain on her face.

“You okay?”

Of course Yang would be the type to follow her. Then again, her exit had hardly been graceful. Blake rubs a hand over her face, wishes they were somewhere louder. Even Portland, hardly a bustling metropolis had more nightlife, more distractions, more to disappear into than this. 

“Yeah,” she says eventually. “Sorry, I just--”

“Got totally weird about the fact that Weiss is, like, corporate royalty?” Yang shrugs and one side of her mouth tilts up into a smile, easy and calm, and Blake’s chest burns traitorously. “Gotta say, I didn’t see that coming.”

She tilts her head over towards a bench further down the wall, and Blake sighs and nods. Yang grins and tilts her chin until Blake leads the way, and waits until Blake’s settled down before pulling her hands out from behind her back, presenting two beers with flair and a deep curtsy.

“Are you even allowed to take these out of the bar?” Blake says, even as she accepts one of them.

“I’m one hundred percent sure that I am not,” Yang says, settling delicately at Blake’s side and tapping her glass to Blake’s. “Cheers, Blake Belladonna.”

“Cheers,” Blake says drily. “Thank you.”

“What are teammates for?” Yang lifts her glass to Blake and then takes a sip, settling more comfortably into the bench. Blake busies herself with sipping at her beer, focusing on that instead of the way that the bench isn’t really big enough for there to be space between them and how she’s pushed into Yang’s side, bare arm to bare arm. It’s not hot, but the air is warm, and Yang is warm enough to burn, practically, a flashover moments away from combusting, and Blake should be running in the opposite direction, moving to safety, putting distance between herself in the impending combustion.

Instead she takes another sip of her beer and melts a little further into the bench. 

“So are you, like, afraid of rich people or something?” Yang says eventually, and Blake chokes a tiny bit on her beer.

“What?”

“Hey, valid question.” Yang shifts, curling one leg up under her and propping an elbow on the back of the bench. It pushes her knee into Blake’s thigh, bare skin against denim, and Blake’s had an ironclad control over her pulse for over a decade but for a moment she’s certain her heartbeat is loud enough to be heard in space. Yang takes a moment to fiddle with the hem of her dress, distractingly, and Blake takes the same moment to bury her focus in her beer once again. “You’re fine around Weiss for weeks and then you find out she’s, like, a Kennedy and then immediately bolt out of the room.”

“Oh,” Blake mumbles. “Right.”

“Ruby’s afraid of geckos,” Yang says. “You’d probably still win the weirdest phobia award. But not by much.”

“I’m not afraid of-- wait, geckos?”

“Geckos.” Yang shrugs. “To each her own, I guess.” She leans her temple against her fist, easy and unconcerned. “So what’s your deal, then, if you’re not secretly afraid of rich people?”

Blake stares down into her drink, one foot tapping slowly against the ground. For a brief, dizzying moment, she considers the possibility of honesty, of explaining, of her life story from growing up homeschooled in an environmentalist commune and running away at twelve to join a splinter cell of eco-terrorists, causing the worst wildfire in recorded North American history that Weiss’s family’s company was blamed for, working her way to joining the most select group of firefighters in the country dedicated exclusively to stopping wildland fires before they ever spread as some form of atonement for her sins.

Instead, she takes another sip of her beer and shakes her head and parses through the truth like she always has, picks out the pieces she can live with and discards the rest.

“I’ve read about SDC a lot in the news,” she says eventually. “I’m not a fan of the company.”

“I mean, yeah.” Yang shrugs. “Is anyone? But Weiss clearly isn’t like that. She’s here working with us. She earned her place here. And she’s pretty great, once you get past that whole prickly exterior thing.”

“Yeah,” Blake says into her beer, smiling in spite of herself, because Weiss is pretty great, and so is Ruby, and so is Yang. Yang who’s sitting out here with her, smiling at her like she’s worth her time, worth her effort, even though Yang burns bright like the sun and Blake’s never been anything but the faded flickering edges of a shadow. “She is.”

“And so are you, once you get past _your_ whole prickly exterior thing,” Yang adds, poking at Blake’s shoulder with the hand holding her beer. Her teeth flash bright in the dim streetlights and Blake’s shoulder burns with the contact, and she barely manages to compose herself enough to let out an offended gasp.

“I’m not _prickly_ ,” she says with a huff. 

“You’re almost as prickly as Weiss,” Yang says solemnly. She holds her beer up like a salute and winks, and Blake’s chest aches around her unsteady breaths because in the decade since she left the White Fang she’s had crushes and friendships, people she trusted and people she loved, but no one has ever burned as bright and dangerous, warm and kind, like Yang has in the short months Blake’s known her. “Don’t tell me you’re also secretly a billionaire, too.”

“What?” Blake blinks slowly, shakes her head, redirecting her attention from the clean lines of Yang’s shoulders, the way her smile burns like embers on the edge of ignition. “I-- no. Definitely not.”

“Too bad,” Yang says with a shrug and a swallow from her beer. “We could’ve been the richest jump team in the country if you were.”

“I’m pretty sure we already are,” Blake says drily. She takes a long drink of her own beer to distract herself. The music from the bar pulses through the wall, humming in the alley around them, and one finger taps against her beer glass absently as it does. 

Yang hums quietly in agreement and props her temple against her fist, eyes unfocused and unconcerned as she watches Blake. 

“Maybe so,” she says eventually. She pushes up to her feet and holds a hand out to Blake, tilts her head towards the bar. “Come on, let’s go back inside.”

Blake takes her hand without thinking about it, the movement and trust automatic and borne of too many weeks of sharing space with the whole of her team, and Yang pulls her up to her feet lazily. Blake clears her throat and looks down into her drink, the half-empty pint glass an easier focal point than the fact that Yang’s hand is familiar in her own, the both of them calloused and strong, and pulls her hand free too slowly. Heat crawls along her cheeks at the way Yang’s eyes seem brighter than usual, her mouth softer, and Blake clears her throat again and shoves her free hand into her pocket. 

“Are you as bad at a mechanical bull as you are at darts?” Blake says after a too-long moment, desperate to redirect attention away from the way she wants to lean closer to the familiar edges of Yang’s smile, the way her instincts tell her to run in the other direction as fast as she can from the inevitable flashpoint.

“I’ll have you know I’m _much_ worse, thank you very much,” Yang says loftily. She lifts her chin primly and spins on one heel towards the entrance to the bar. “Just for that, I’m signing you up for the bull.”

“Don’t you--” Blake starts to say, and then nearly drops her beer because Yang’s set off at a run towards the bar, laugh trailing over her shoulder. Blake curses and sprints after her, skidding around the entrance and into the crowd at the bar just in time to see Yang at the mechanical bull sign-up sheet, pen in hand and Nora bouncing on her heels at her side. Blake shoves her beer into Nora’s hand and launches forward, wrestling for the pen in Yang’s hand. 

It’s easy, scrabbling for the pen in Yang’s hand, fighting to stop her from signing Blake up to absolutely humiliate herself on a mechanical bull. Easier than focusing on the way her skin hums at every point of contact, the way Yang’s laugh lightens the whole bar and her smile, wide and easy, drags the air from Blake’s lungs like a backdraft before it combusts. 

She’s managed to get an arm around Yang’s and twisted it out straight, knee in her ribs and other hand trying to reach the pen without losing her grip, unconcerned with the fact that there’s a crowd around them cheering them on and taking pictures, when Weiss’s voice cuts through the noise.

“Honestly,” she says with a huff, and both of them freeze in place. “You two are a _menace_.”

“KIck her ass, Yang!” Ruby says, bouncing on her heels at Weiss’s side, and Weiss rolls her eyes and shoves an elbow into Ruby’s side. 

“Are you done yet?” Weiss folds her arms over her chest.

“Absolutely not,” Yang says cheerily, planting one foot and pushing until Blake starts to lose her balance. There’s a familiar yell from the crowd and a redheaded whirlwind hits both of them, Nora joining in on the fight. Somewhere around the time Blake and Yang both lose their balance and go toppling to the floor along with Nora, there’s another sigh from Weiss in the background, a cheer from Ruby, and Blake’s breath is shoved out of her lungs when she lands with Yang’s elbow crashing into her stomach and they all lose track of the pen they’re ostensibly fighting over, and Blake smiles easy anyways, more at home than she’s felt since the day she decided to leave the White Fang.


	2. Chapter 2

> _backburn_ : precautionary fire set downwind of the main fire for controlled fuel clearing by backing it into the main fire

The weeks after training stretch out languorously as the temperatures click steadily higher. There’s only one apartment complex near the base, and they all land there, Blake two doors away from Weiss in one direction and three from Yang and Ruby in the other. They carpool to the base every day, filling their hours with workouts and equipment assessment and upkeep, anxious energy thrumming in the background as they wait for dispatch to call them out to a burning patch of forest. 

It settles into a constant quiet pit in Blake’s stomach, one she’s familiar with from her time spent filling empty hours at the Portland fire stations, on the helitack crew. Fighting fires is the easy part; waiting for the fire to form is the hardest. She settles it like she always has, keeping herself constantly engaged in managing her gear, in running drills, in exercise. She goes for a run every day with Weiss, because they run at the exact same pace, and lifts with Yang, and lets Ruby convince her to try mountain biking. She rolls her eyes in tandem with Weiss when Ruby declares that the four of them will do weekly team dinners, but shows up at Ruby and Yang’s apartment dutifully and lets herself be cajoled into helping Yang in the kitchen, even though she’s never had any capability in cooking and is more of a hindrance than a help.

The days stretch slowly into summer, and sometime in late June she comes skidding to a stop on her borrowed mountain bike behind Ruby at the base, filthy and sweaty from trying to keep up, and Weiss is waiting for them impatiently.

“Dispatch called,” she says briskly, hurrying them back inside to the gear room. Yang’s already there, ankle braces strapped on and half into her jumpsuit. Blake dumps her helmet into the locker between Weiss and Yang, trading it for her jump gear. To Weiss’s left, Ruby’s rattling off the information from dispatch as they dress and Blake commits it all to memory-- a half-acre burst ten miles from the closest access road, deep into mountainous territory, far enough that it’d take even the best hotshots crew days to get there-- as she breathes in slowly, exhales slower, and shrugs her way into her jumpsuit. 

The four of them make up the bulk of a seven-person crew jumping today, the remainder of the team veterans who’ve been jumping into fires for years, and Blake breathes out against the nerves, the adrenaline, the same quiet desperation to prove herself that she’d felt when she first graduated the fire academy, the first time she led a response team to a house fire, her first jump on helitack. 

“You ready?” Yang’s voice cuts through her practiced quiet, and Blake shakes her head, pauses, nods. Yang squeezes her shoulder, grip distant through the heavy kevlar of Blake’s jumpsuit, and then slaps a kiss on top of Ruby’s head, elbows Weiss in the ribs. “Let’s rock and roll, kids.”

“I’m older than you,” Weiss says drolly even as she follows Yang out towards the tarmac. Blake slaps her palm against Ruby’s with a grin, unable to avoid her infectious enthusiasm, and hauls her helmet up under her arm with one hand, checks her pockets-- protein bars and beef jerky and the spare miniature first aid kid she carried on every helitack jump-- with the other. 

They’re the last one onto the plane, and Blake claims the last open seat, next to one of the veterans-- Yatsu, an enormous wall of a man even when his silhouette isn’t bulked up by a jumpsuit; in his gear, he’s more mountain than man, softened only by the meditative smile he offers Blake when she squeezes in next to him-- and across from Yang. The spotters close the door and with one last check for seatbelts and helmets, they’re taking off and headed towards the fire.

The drone of the engine drowns out any potential for conversation, and Blake closes her eyes, sinks into a quiet focus on her breathing, measuring breaths against one another and holding her heartbeat steady. She doesn’t open her eyes until the spotter yells out. Her eyes open slowly and Yang the first thing she sees, flipping her blonde braid over her shoulder and yanking her helmet on. The startling lavender of her eyes shines behind the cage of her helmet, the corners crinkling when she smiles and winks at Blake, holds a fist out to her side for Ruby to bump hers against. 

Two minutes later, the doors open and the crates of gear go first, and then Yatsu leads them all out. Blake breathes in and lets herself fall out of the plane like she has so many times, and exhales as her body curls in on itself habitually. Hot air whips by her as she falls and the static line pulls taut when her chute deploys just like it’s meant to, and despite the burn in her eyes and the way her throat feels gummy and dry from the hot air she’s hurtling through, Blake smiles. 

The trees rush up towards her and gusts of wind shove her around, but she’s lucky enough to miss the worst of the branches and lands in a roll on dusty dry ground. Twenty feet to her right, Weiss lands in a roll of her own and pops up to her feet delicately, and Blake rolls her eyes; to her left, there’s an annoyed grumble from overhead where Yang’s chute caught in a particularly expansive set of tree branches and she’s working at freeing herself.

“You good up there?” Blake calls up as she disengages from her own chute and bundles it away as best she can. Around her, the smoke-tinged air is filled with the sounds of the rest of the team packing their chutes away. “Need a hand?”

Yang pauses long enough to lean back from where she’s managed to brace her boots against the tree trunk and flip her middle finger in Blake’s direction, and Blake grins as Weiss stops at her side and stares up at Yang with a sigh.

“Any time you’re ready,” Weiss says, flat and bored, and Blake glance sideways at her and the way one side of her mouth is tilted up in a smile.

“On it, your majesty,” Yang calls down. She yanks at the chute lines twice more and then pulls free, dropping down ten feet and catching herself on a branch and then dropping the rest of the way. Dry pine needles and dust puff up around her boots, and she flings both arms over her head like a gymnast. “And she sticks the landing.”

“I give it a seven,” Weiss drawls out.

“Six point five,” Blake says, arms folded over her chest. “Weiss had a better landing.”

“Six point five my _ass_ ,” Yang mutters as she tugs her helmet off. Her cheeks are flushed bright, freckles standing out more than ever, and Blake’s bravado falters for a moment, contorting into something thundering and aggressive in her chest, sitting between adrenaline and ever-present guilt. “I’m coming for you, Belladonna.”

 _Please do_ nearly leaps off of Blake’s tongue, and she clears her throat instead and manages to eloquently stick her tongue out in response. Yang returns the favor, and Weiss sighs, and Blake settles, because they’re a team, here to do a job, and whatever galloping thunderous attraction she feels when she looks at Yang has no place here on the edges of a potential inferno.

“Everyone good?” Yatsu calls out, already out of his jumpsuit. “Gear’s probably about a mile north.”

“All good,” Yang says, eyes still locked on Blake, and Blake coughs uselessly and sets to shrugging out of her own suit. It’s a welcome distraction to the way Yang-- big and bright, flush with adrenaline, smile like a burst of fire-- is still staring at her, even as she strips her own kevlar off. Next to her, Weiss has her suit off and folded up neatly and is watching the both of them appraisingly.

Blake stows her kevlar and trades her jump helmet for her regular one, deliberately avoiding the way both Yang and Weiss are looking at her-- predatory and baldly inquisitive, respectively-- as she marches off to join the linkup with the rest of the team. 

There’s a welcome distraction as Yatsu sets off leading them towards the gear crate. The thought of Yang and all the ruin she could mean for Blake, for the way Blake keeps bending towards her and wishing for it to happen, fades away as Blake keeps her focus on the back of Ruby’s head in front of her as they set off towards the gear. The air is scalding and arid and sweat pricks at her hairline and under the weight of her pack, and her attention settles on leveling her breaths, on calculating how far off they are from the firesite and how fast it’s likely to spread at this wind speed.

They’re quiet as they make it to the crate and break into teams, dividing up gear silently. Blake’s paired with Yatsu and Weiss, and she accepts the chainsaw he hands her, passes an ax to Weiss. They’re close to the fire now, close enough that they can hear it, and there’s no time to think about the way that Yang, hefting an ax and setting off to start clearing her team’s side of the fireline, tall and powerful and kind, looks like the first thing besides redemption Blake can ever remember wanting. She pauses just long enough to take a swig of water and follows Yatsu and Weiss, chainsaw screaming to life in her hands. 

The fire is still small, and the wind is on their side, dying down to barely a breeze not long after they set to clearing a fireline. Two hours in Blake trades with Weiss, who’s been hacking away at the smaller saplings while Blake clears the larger ones and Yatsu brings up the rear, digging a pulaski into the ground to expand the line. It feels good out here in the middle of nowhere, a wildfire burning twenty yards away as they cut a wide circle of firebreak around it, and Blake breathes easy and sinks into the rhythm of swinging the ax, methodical and heavy.

They run into Yang’s team another three hours in, and Blake watches as Weiss cuts down the last tree they need to clear to complete the perimeter, leaning on her ax and letting herself rest for a moment as Ruby and one of the other vets clear out the last of the shrubbery in the trench. There’s a brief moment of rest as they chug water and chew through protein bars, and then they set to expanding the fireline, creeping closer and closer to the fire and digging up soil and shrubbery, eliminating anything that could fuel a fire and help it grow. 

The sun sets at some point, and the headlamp on her helmet is hardly needed, the fire they’re working to starve still almost bright enough to light their way. Hours pass and they finally start to feel some measure of progress, the soil they’re digging through ashier as they edge closer and closer to a dying fire. Blake thinks back to early in training when they were set to digging firelines for 24 hours straight, and wonders how long she’s been at it today, trading off between ax and chainsaw and pulaski as time clicks on. Sometime long after the sun’s gone down, Yatsu taps her out to rest for half an hour, propped upright against her pack and chin drooping towards her chest, a blissful delirious spark of a moment until the timer on her watch goes off and wakes her up, prodding her to go tap Ruby out so she can rest. 

By the time the fire’s contained, it’s nearly sunset on the second day, and Blake forgets any semblance of pride when Yatsu tells them it’s time to head back to the campsite so they can sleep through the night, dropping to lean against a tree with a groan. Weiss leans against the tree next to her and stretches one arm across her body, letting out an indignant whine at the soreness in her muscles that Blake knows all too well.

“Wanna sit?” Blake mumbles, contemplating looking up, but her helmet feels too heavy for her to manage it and instead she just leans her head against Weiss’s leg.

“If I sit, I won’t stand back up.”

“Smart.” Blake stares down at her legs, the heavy pants filthy with dirt and ash, and wonders how likely it is that she’ll actually have the energy to stand up.

“It’s not _that_ bad,” Yang says, ax slung across her shoulders and arms hooked lazily over it. Her face is as filthy as Blake’s clothes, ash clinging to her sweaty skin in streaks, braid messy but still intact under her helmet. Her eyes are the brightest thing in the whole forest now that the fire’s burned down, and Blake stares stupidly up at them as she flashes momentarily back to hours ago when one of the trees Yatsu had been cutting through with a chainsaw suddenly snapped and tumbled in the wrong direction, falling right towards where Yang was digging with a pulaski. Blake had been thirty yards away, barely able to do more than shout along with everyone else, too far away to do anything to save her but starting to run regardless.

Yang had launched herself away from the falling tree, pack and all, flinging her pulaski away and landing hard on her left side. Even now her entire left side is more filthy than the rest of her, but she smiles wide and tired at the both of them. 

“Yatsu told me the other day that last year they were on a jump near here that took them five days to contain,” Yang carries on, oblivious to the way Blake’s staring at her damaged left side and thinking about the moment she’d been sure that Yang was about to die. “Two days doesn't sound all that bad, yeah?”

“I hate you,” Weiss informs her, but she offers her half-empty water bottle to Yang anyways. Blake watches, mesmerized in her exhaustion, as Yang takes a swallow and then pulls her helmet off and pours the rest over her face. Her mouth goes dry at the sight, desperately inappropriate here ten miles from the closest remnant of civilization, surrounded by the remains of a fire they spent the last day and a half starving, and she redirects her focus to her own water bottle. Clumsy fingers detach it from her hip and she swallows half of it in one go, the ache in her too-empty stomach a welcome distraction for the way Yang’s wiping water off her face and raising an eyebrow at her, mouth set into a familiar soft smile that radiates the same kindness the underlines everything she does.

“I can live with that,” Yang says, charming as always and focused directly on Blake even as she spoke to Weiss. Blake keeps her attention on her water instead of the way Yang’s practically glinting in the midst of all the dreary burnt soil surrounding them, enough to keep herself from flushing under her own decorative layer of dirt and ash but not enough to hide from the way Yang’s eyes have pinned her to the spot she’s sitting in.

“You’re unbelievable.” Weiss peels herself off of the tree she’s leaning on, leaving Blake to nearly topple to one side, and swipes her now-empty bottle out of Yang’s hands and stalks off. 

“She’s obsessed with me,” Yang says easily, despite the fact that a glare from Weiss had been enough to set more than one of their trainers on the run, and she shrugs, smiles wider, offers a hand to Blake. “Ready for the hike?”

“Obviously,” Blake says without meaning to, hand curling around Yang’s without meaning to, her whole body responding to Yang without her meaning to, and she curses her own lack of control as Yang pulls her up to standing. Yang’s palm is just as sweaty and grimy as her own, despite the gloves they wear, strong and calloused just like hers, but Blake’s pulse stutters and her mouth dries out despite the water she just swallowed and she forgets to let go, forgets that she shouldn’t be thinking about the way Yang’s skin feels against her own, forgets that she’s here for a reason that isn’t Yang and the way they keep bending towards each other like gravity demands it.

Blake clears her throat and pulls her hand free, wipes her palms on her dirty pants uselessly, shakes her head. “We should get moving,” she says past the dry ache in her throat. “Tomorrow will be a long day.”

“What, you’re not excited for mop up?” Yang swings the ax back across her shoulders, drapes her arms over it casually like she hasn’t spent the last day and a half straight swinging it to cut down trees and brush, like her arms couldn’t possibly be as exhausted as Blake’s. 

“Shocking, isn’t it,” Blake says drily. “Can’t imagine why.”

“They don’t put that part in the brochure, do they?” Yang falls into step beside Blake, ax hanging lazy from one hand and the other tucked into her pocket. She could be walking home from the grocery store if her posture had anything to say about it. “It’s all glory-glory-jump-out-of-planes, and then after they’ve conned you into it it’s ‘oh, spend the last day of every jump crawling through the dirt’.” 

“How dare they,” Blake drawls out, even though she’s dreading the next day as much as anything. There’s something earthy and honest to the fact of suppression, the swing of an ax and delineation of a fireline, something that disappears into the graceless task of checking acres of dirt on hands and knees in search of any remaining pockets of heat or embers. “False advertising.”

“So rude,” Yang says mildly as they catch up to Weiss, and she bumps her hip against Weiss’s. 

“You’re rude,” Weiss echoes serenely, shoving an elbow into Yang’s side and humming with satisfaction when it smashes the wind out of her lungs. “Bother Blake some more, will you? I’m tired.”

“How _dare_ you,” Yang says with a gasp, swinging an arm around Weiss’s shoulder and looking back to wink gratuitously at Blake. Blake nearly trips over a divot of dirt left from a pulaski strike and looks down at her feet and tugs at her helmet instead of meeting Yang’s wink head on. “I don’t _bother_ Blake. She loves spending time with me.”

“By all means, then.” Weiss makes no move to dislodge Yang’s arm, instead shifting her ax to her other side to keep it from bumping into Yang’s leg. “Honor her with your presence instead.”

“Ungrateful,” Yang says cheerfully. She hipchecks Weiss, instead hitting her in the middle of the ribcage, and leaps to the side when Weiss swings the handle of her ax at her in retaliation.

“If she murders you, I’m not stopping her,” Blake says, strolling along behind them. 

“You totally would.” Yang shortens her stride until she’s next to Blake, and Blake’s skin warms under the layer of dirt and sweat in a way that has nothing to do with the fire they’ve been fighting all day and everything to do with the way Yang slings an arm around her shoulders. “Admit it, Belladonna, you’d be miserable without me to balance out Weiss being totally mean all the time.”

“Hey,” Weiss says indignantly, but there’s no bite behind it, and Yang flips her pulaski around until she can lean forward, half her weight dragging at Blake’s shoulders, and poke at Weiss’s pack with the end of the handle. 

“I’m pretty sure I have Ruby for that,” Blake says as evenly as she can with Yang plastered against her side.

“Lies and propaganda,” Yang says flippantly. She drags herself back upright, nearly sending both of them toppling to the forest floor, and raps her knuckles against Blake’s helmet. “You love me.”

Blake coughs, nearly choking on her own spit, because she can’t pretend there isn’t something smoldering deep in her chest, something that pulls her towards Yang’s bright eyes and brighter smiles. _I’m getting there_ rattles in her chest, thankfully coming out as just another cough instead, and she pounds a fist against her chest to cover up the fact that even with both of their heavy fireproof uniforms, every inch of skin pressed against Yang’s side feels like it’s been doused in accelerant and set on fire.

“Please don’t murder Blake,” Ruby says reproachfully, popping up at Blake’s side and hooking an arm through hers, yanking her away from Yang. Blake’s left side goes cold with the loss of contact, and she stumbles into Ruby’s side instead. She redirects her focus to steadying her stride and squaring her pack up on her back, watching the back of Weiss’s helmet ahead of them as they keep hiking, instead of on the way Yang cheerfully winks at her and then flicks Ruby off.

It’s another ten minutes to the camp, and Blake spends it listening to Ruby and Yang talking past her, her arm still hooked into Ruby’s. It’s more awkward to hike through untouched terrain, but it’s comforting, Ruby forever a stalwart presence that’s never belied by her effervescence or the way she’s currently engaged in a heated debate over the best chocolate chips for cookies.

It’s nearly dark by the time they make it to the gear crate, and there’s enough time for them to spread out sleeping bags in the clearing and refill water bottles before the last of the sunlight slips away. Blake lays on top of her bag with a groan and takes another bite of the protein bar she’d dug out of her pack. It takes more energy than she feels like using to chew, but she does it anyways, out of necessity and force of habit more than hunger, but by the time the food hits her stomach she realizes she’s ravenous. 

She’s on her third protein bar before she slows down and takes a moment to stretch. The muscles in her back strain against the stretch as she links her hands and pushes her palms towards the sky, twisting left and then right. To one side, Ruby’s munching on a packet of chocolate chip cookies; to the other, Yang is sprawled on her side facing Weiss, leaning on one elbow and, apparently, talking about skiing. Blake’s skied before, more times than she could count-- living in the pacific northwest makes it inevitable-- but Weiss and Yang are deep into a rapidfire discussion about ski pole length that Blake can’t keep up with, and she stretches once more, casts another glance towards the back of Yang’s head and breathes through the inevitable flip low in her belly at the sight of her, and lays back down.

The temperature’s dropped with the sunset and the sky is clear, and Blake folds her arms under her head and stares up at the way this far out from the world and light pollution, the sky is crowded with stars. On the other side of the small clearing, the rest of the jump team are spread out on their sleeping bags as well, talking softly with one another. The quiet hum of voices-- of Yatsu and his team, of Weiss and Yang at her side, Ruby occasionally piping in from the other side-- melds into the sounds of the forest, and Blake closes her eyes and sinks into the sounds, drifting off towards sleep.

* * *

It’s a long hike back to the closest road, longer still after a long day of mop up, and Blake’s only interest in life is a shower and a long nap. She half-dozes off in the transport truck back to Missoula, Weiss drowsy on one shoulder and Ruby catatonic on the other. By the time they make it back to base, Blake barely has the energy to stow her gear and finalize the paperwork for the next team coming on shift before she collapses on a bench in the locker room. 

“You know.” Yang’s voice sounds from the doorway, and even the blazing interest that’s dragged Blake closer to her with every day since the beginning of training, Blake barely has the energy to let her head fall to one side and peel one eye open. “I was going to make fun of you for zonking out on the bench, but Ruby and Weiss fell asleep in my truck, so maybe it’s unfair.”

“Totally unfair,” Blake says with a groan. She flops one arm out lazily and doesn’t have the energy to pull it back up onto her stomach, instead leaving it dangling towards the floor. “I’m skipping team dinner tonight. Pour one out for me.”

“I could do that,” Yang says conversationally, shutting the door behind her and leaning against it with her hands behind her back. “But when I said they zonked out in my truck I mean Ruby’s drooling on my steering wheel, so how about we pour one out for them instead?”

She produces a half-empty bottle of whiskey from behind her back with a flourish, and Blake wonders if she’s died without realizing it, if Yang’s actually superhuman, and if this is all just a fever dream in quick succession before landing on the realization that Yang probably raided the chief’s office.

“Who’d you steal that from?” She pushes up to a semi-sitting position and swallows a groan, frowns down at her filthy hands.

“Yatsu,” Yang says carelessly. “He scrubbed up and drove off before the rest of us stowed our gear, so I’m considering anything visible in his locker to be fair game.” She rattles the bottle towards Blake, amber liquid sloshing around in it, and Blake eyes the temptation of it, the temptation of Yang, and nods before realizing she’s done it. 

“Bring it here.”

“Nuh uh, Belladonna,” Yang says with a scoff. “Come on.”

“What?” Blake lets out a whine even as she stands up automatically, ready to follow Yang anywhere she asks. “Why?”

“Best seat in the house,” Yang says, sweeping the door open behind her with a bow. “Come on, don’t you trust me?”

 _Of course_ , Blake nearly says, barely managing to catch it behind her teeth, warping it into _“Why should I?”_ even as she follows Yang faithfully, matching her lackadaisical stroll out towards the tarmac. She’s too tired, too interested, too ready for a drink to question it when Yang leads her to the same plane that had dropped them off for their first alarm three days ago and climbs up the outside of it, sprawling along the wing and offering a hand to Blake.

It’s nearly sunset, the sky tingeing orange and red around clouds that reach towards the mountaintops, and Blake pauses when she’s made it up to the wing even as Yang hops up onto the body of the plane and jerks her head towards the nose. 

“Told you,” Yang says, plopping down to sit with her feet dangling over the windscreen. “Best seat in the house.”

“I’m pretty sure this is worth a demerit or two.” Blake settles down more delicately at her side, biting back a groan at the way her whole body protests the movement, and she reaches immediately for the bottle in Yang’s hands. “Give me that, I swear to God.”

“Yes ma’am,” Yang says, only the barest trace of mockery in her voice as she hands it over and watches Blake uncork it and take a long drink. Blake passes it back to her blindly after a long moment, leaning back on her hands and tipping her head up towards the sky as the whiskey warms her chest from the inside out. 

“Does it get easier, you think?” The words are out before Blake realizes she’s considered speaking them, and she bites down on the inside of her cheek to stop herself from scrambling to pull them back. It’s too easy to talk to Yang, too easy to loosen her hold on the jagged pieces of her she’s kept stowed away for years. Yang is open and honest, too easy to talk to, a pine forest in a drought waiting for Blake’s ragged edges to spark against each other and ruin the both of them. 

“What, stealing from Yatsu?” Yang shrugs and grins, wide and easy like always, and Blake’s body flushes warm from the outside in, meeting and matching the whiskey working its way through her veins. “Probably. He doesn’t exactly hide the good whiskey.”

“The jumps,” Blake says. She accepts the bottle back and takes another sip, rolls her head on her neck and sinks into the satisfying series of cracks that echo down her spine as she does. “The exhaustion.”

There’s a protracted stretch of silence, Yang reclaiming the bottle in Blake’s periphery but not drinking from it, staring down absently at the curling edge of the paper label and dragging a thumb-- cleaner than when they’d left the firesite but still tinged with dirt and ash, dark blue polish chipped and cracked on short nails-- along the edge of it. Blake holds out as long as she can, keeping her eyes ostensibly on the skyline, but eventually gives in and tilts her head towards Yang, shoulders following suit as her whole body turns until she can curl a leg up towards her chest and face her more fully. 

“I don’t know,” Yang finally says. She takes a small sip and looks out towards the horizon. She’s rinsed the worst of the dirt from her face but there’s still ash ground into her eyebrows and hairline, a fleck in the shadow under the jawline, and Blake wraps her hands around her own shin and pulls it closer to her chest to keep from reaching for it. 

“My very first call was a gas station fire,” Yang says. She slots a look over at Blake, one corner of her mouth hitched up into a smile. “I was this fresh-faced probie and I was _sure_ I was ready for anything. I’d set the station record on my trial run and was high as a goddamn kite and twice as arrogant. All bluster and super sexy muscle and _zero_ brains.”

She glances over at Blake and winks, clicks her tongue against her teeth, stretches her arms out in front of her so her forearms flex appealingly under her rolled-up sleeves. Blake’s fingers dig into her shin and she determinedly binds her focus to the present instead of imagining Yang, 22 years old and bursting with muscle and confidence and an unshadowed determination, all strength and certainty and cockiness. It’s a mistake, because now she has to bite down on her tongue to stop herself from saying something she’ll regret about exactly how appealing Yang’s super sexy muscles are even now, years later when there’s the same distant edge of shadow in her eyes that every firefighter who’s lost someone on a call carries.

“It was at this gas station like a mile from the house I was living in,” Yang carries on. “I’d stopped there like a hundred times before. Bad sealant on the pumps and then some asshole threw a cigarette out his window as he pulled in to fill up.”

Blake props her chin on her knee, humming quietly in understanding. She’d responded to enough similar calls in her time in Portland to understand the way oil fires spread aggressively, that gas stations were unique hazards and a horrifying stressor on any call. 

“It was only a few blocks away, so we got there fast,” Yang says. The lilting edge to her voice has leveled off into something calmer, heavier, older. “But not fast enough. The guy who’d thrown the cigarette out, he’d driven through the oil leak on his way in. His whole car was up in flames before we got there, before he could even get the door open.”

Blake is quiet, fingers flexing against her shin instead of reaching for Yang. She knows where this story is going, has too many of them of her own to match pace with the shadowy edge to Yang’s eyes, the frustrated slump to her shoulders. 

“After, I asked my captain if I’d ever forget the smell,” Yang says after a long moment. “He said I never would, and that it never gets easier, and that was good. It keeps us honest.” She tilts the bottle against her lips and swallows half of what’s left in it, lets out a heavy breath at the burn, at the history, at the same ache that has to be dragging her muscles down.

“I think the day it gets easy is the day I need to find a new job,” Yang says eventually. She holds the bottle out blindly for Blake, and Blake hesitates for a moment, fingers digging into her shin, before accepting it.

“What would you do if you didn’t do this?” 

It’s not what she means to say. She wants to say _I’ll never forget the first time someone died on a call_ , wants to say _I don’t think I can ever do anything but this_ , wants to say _I’m here for the wrong reasons and one day everyone will know_. Instead she twists the corked cap on the bottle half a turn clockwise and then back again, over and over, wanting to reach for Yang and stuck in the traction of her own shortcomings instead.

“There’s nothing but this,” Yang says with a shrug, a tilt to her head, half a smile. “I was accepted into the academy after college and just kept working up to the next level, but there’s not really another level after this. Rubes and I worked ski patrol in the off season before we came here, so there’s that, I guess. But I don’t know how to do anything but be a firefighter.”

Blake pauses with the bottle halfway to her mouth, lips dry as she stares blatantly at Yang’s profile, the cut of her jaw and the sharp edge to her gaze as she stares out towards the skyline. There’s an eloquence to Yang, something complex and lingering that Blake, a crass collection of messy brushstrokes masquerading as something complete, can't reach, can't understand, can't touch.

“What about you?” Yang says, finally turning to face Blake like a spotlight, and Blake freezes in place. “Any big plans post-smokejumping?”

There’s a moment yet again where it nearly all spills out and Blake presses her lips together and grinds her teeth to keep it all locked away, to keep her sordid past and shortcomings sealed up tight. She lowers the bottle, lets her knee drift down to the hot metal below her and focuses herself in the ache in her legs at the stretch. 

“I don’t know,” she finally says. “I guess I haven’t thought that far ahead.” She flicks a thumbnail against the cap of the bottle absently. “One of the guys on my helitack crew said he used to go on loan assignments in Australia during the off season. Southern hemisphere and all that. So maybe I’ll look into that.”

“You don’t even have a plan for this off season?” Yang shifts to mirror Blake’s posture, one leg folded up under her and the other dangling over the windscreen of the plane, tilts her weight back on her hands and one eyebrow up. 

“Not really.” Blake directs her gaze from Yang’s eyes down to her shoulder, but that’s hardly better, the loosened top buttons of the same fireproof shirt Blake’s wearing disheveled enough to let the edges of the tattoo the flowers up from her shoulder peek out. “I spent so long just trying to get here, I guess I never really thought about doing anything else.”

“You could teach a class in career planning in the off season,” Yang says drily. She swipes the bottle back from Blake, fingertips dragging over the back of her hand as she does. “‘How to aggressively fail to consider how to make a living for half a year.’”

“ _Rude_ ,” Blake throws back, leaning forward to grab the bottle back, but Yang just grins and shoves her free hand against Blake’s shoulder, stiffarming her out of reach and taking a flamboyant drink as she does. Blake huffs at the insult of it all and winds an arm around Yang’s, pulling until her elbow gives and Blake can lunge forward and grab for the whiskey. 

“Nuh uh,” Yang says with a wink, holding the bottle back behind her and grinning widely, bright enough to match pace with the dramatic sprawl of colors across the sky, and Blake nearly loses her grip and her balance up on the plane at the sight of it. Yang lets out a yelp when Blake’s balance tilts, shifting immediately from wrestling to curling an arm around her waist and hauling her back upright. 

“Are you trying to kill me?” Blake does her best to keep her voice light but it wavers anyways, dipping into uncertainty because Yang’s uneven exhales are close enough to warm her skin, hand careful at her waist, and she’s close enough that Blake could just tilt her head and kiss her, lean into every worst instinct she’s had since the day she arrived in Missoula. 

“Maybe,” Yang says, her voice uncharacteristically soft, too quiet for her bombastic presence, and it curls around Blake’s ribcage and settles into place behind her sternum, capturing her breath and pinning her focus to the way Yang’s eyes are forever bright, her mouth dangerously close. 

“Rude,” Blake croaks out again. Her gaze flicks down towards Yang’s mouth and then back up to her eyes, as if those are any safer to focus on, and pauses, breathes in carefully. Yang’s eyes flicker, her hand firm at Blake’s waist, and Blake holds her breath for a split second and then exhales and yanks the bottle out of Yang’s limp hand.

“Too slow, Xiao Long,” Blake manages to get out, swiping back some semblance of victory, of solid ground, of sanity in the face of how all she really wants to do is kiss Yang and taste the glittering brightness that is her smile. Jokes are easy, competition a safeguard, and she’s pulled herself back from the brink of something irreversible when Yang tilts forward dangerously and kisses her.

It’s over before Blake even has a chance to close her eyes, Yang pulling back just enough to speak but still anchored to the way her palm’s suddenly warm along Blake’s jawline.

“Sorry,” Yang mumbles, close enough that the words land physically against Blake’s lips. “I just--”

Blake lunges forward, barely present enough to discard the bottle safely onto the plane’s roof before her fingers curl into Yang’s shirt and she kisses her again, charged with every minute over the past three months Blake’s held herself back. A small sound escapes Yang’s mouth when she pulls back for air and then dives back in, hands strong at Blake’s cheeks. Blake presses closer, fingers knotted tight in the heavy material of Yang’s shirt, mouth slanting against hers until she has no choice but to pause for a breath.

“I-- not sorry, I guess?” Yang breathes out. Her forehead tilts against Blake’s, breath washing over Blake’s lips and drawing a shiver down her spine. Blake presses closer even as she tells herself she shouldn’t, that this is a bad idea on more levels than she could list. 

“I--” Blake starts and then bites off, breathing shaky and hands aching at the grip she has on Yang’s shirt. “I’m sorry, I-- we shouldn’t--”

“Because we’re teammates.” Yang kisses her again, slow and scalding, and Blake’s body hums like it does when she’s about to launch herself out of a plane, rappel from a helicopter, run into a burning building. 

“Right,” Blake mutters, still not pulling away. “Teammates.” It’s easier to hide behind propriety and fraternization standards than it is to admit she’s drowning in a lifetime’s worth of guilt, that she’s nothing but a flicker of shadow next to Yang’s overwhelming light. 

“Uh huh.” Yang’s thumb drags along her cheekbone, her palms still gritty with ground in dirt just like Blake’s entire body is, and there’s something inappropriately filthy to the way they spent the last two days in the middle of a wildfire and haven’t even had a chance to shower, much less sleep in a proper bed, and instead of doing anything they should be they’re drinking stolen whiskey and kissing furiously in front of the sunset. “Teammates.”

“Right,” Blake gasps out as she finally manages to pull away. “We shouldn’t--it’s a bad idea.” Her hands ache as she manages to unwind her fingers from their hold on Yang’s shirt. 

“You’re sure?” Yang’s eyes are still shut, forehead tilted against Blake’s, and Blake nearly gives in, nearly throws away a decade’s worth of single minded determination just for another taste of Yang’s lips. 

“Yes,” she says, shaking and unconvincing. “We’re on a jump team together, we have to-- it’s a bad idea.” 

It takes more effort than she wants to admit to pull back, sitting up straighter and pulling her hands free. Yang sighs at the loss, eyes opening reluctantly, and Blake has to bite down on the inside of her cheek to stop from kissing her again. 

“We’re on a jump team,” Blake says again. “We-- this would complicate things. Not just for us, but for the rest of the team.”

“Yeah,” Yang mutters. She drags a hand through her hair, scrubs her palms over her face, exhales loudly and turns to face forward. The sunset paints her profile in light more than shadow and Blake knows, now, what it feels like to kiss her and she wants more, wants everything, wants to taste her again and again and again. 

Instead, she turns to face forward as well, winds her hands together in her lap to keep them occupied, stares down at them instead of at the way Yang looks lit up by the setting sun. 

“So.” She clears her throat after a protracted stretch of uncomfortable silence. “Friends?”

There’s a long moment where Yang doesn’t answer, a gulf of quiet that Blake’s worry fills with every negative possible reaction-- Yang laughing at her and saying she never meant to kiss her; Yang walking away and leaving the Missoula base; Yang somehow listing off every terrible thing Blake’s ever done and holding them all up in front of the rest of their jump team-- before she finally answers.

“Yeah,” Yang says, still staring forward. “Friends.” She tilts to the side, digs an elbow into Blake’s side. 

“Okay,” Blake says softly. Her ribs burn from the contact. 

There’s a distant creak of the heavy door out onto the tarmac opening, and Yang clears her throat and turns abruptly towards it, shoulders and spine sharp. 

“Yang!” Ruby bellows from the door. “Let’s go home!”

Blake leans to one side until she can see around Yang’s delightfully broad shoulders to where Ruby and Weiss are standing in the doorway, Ruby nonplussed and Weiss irritated as always.

“Okay!” Yang yells back. She turns back to Blake, tilts towards her for a terrifying moment, and then pulls back, smiles softly, jerks her head towards the door. “Shall we, friend?”

She climbs to her feet and offers a hand down to Blake. Blake stares up at her for too long of a moment before accepting the help. Her body protests as she stands, muscle soreness she’d forgotten while kissing Yang rushing back to make itself known. 

“Fuck, I’m sore,” she mutters. Her neck cracks as she tilts her head to one side. 

“Yatsu said tomorrow will be even worse,” Yang says cheerfully as she climbs down the side of the plane, pausing to wink up at Blake. 

“Yatsu is a monster,” Blake throws back as she climbs down as well, landing heavily on the tarmac. 

“He totally is,” Yang says. She elbows Blake in the side again and then they’re in front of Ruby and Weiss, and Yang grins broadly and musses Ruby’s hair and then dodges her flailing and sweeps Weiss up in a bridal carry. “Let’s go, jump team! I need a shower and a beer!”

“Put me _down_ , you asshole.” Weiss manages to nearly get Yang in a headlock but it doesn’t stop her march towards the parking lot, and Ruby sighs fondly as she watches them and crooks an elbow out to Blake.

“Shall we?”

A deep, heavy affection settles in Blake’s stomach at Ruby’s offer, at Yang and Weiss bickering fondly, because this is her team. It’s almost more consuming than the fact that she can still taste Yang’s chapstick on her lips, that her hands can still feel the way Yang’s pulse had thundered through her sternum when Blake kissed her.

“We shall,” Blake says courteously, hooking her hand through Ruby’s elbow. 

They all cram into Yang’s truck for the drive home, just like they had two mornings ago when they carpooled over. Blake takes one of the seats in the back, which barely has room for Weiss’s short legs, but it’s better to be squished up uncomfortably against Weiss than to be in the front where she can so easily reach for Yang’s hand, her leg, the cut of her jaw. 

She’s nearly asleep on Weiss’s shoulder by the time they make it down the service road to the highway, drifting off to the sound of Yang and Ruby arguing over dinner plans and Weiss occasionally contributing in between texts to Pyrrha. Blake hums noncommittally when Ruby asks her opinion about dinner and resettles more comfortably on Weiss’s shoulder, safe and warm.


	3. Chapter 3

> _flashover_ : near-simultaneous ignition of most of the directly combustible material in the area

Blake’s woken by a pounding on her front door and she lets out an indignant yell and crams a pillow over her head. Per protocol, they aren’t on call for at least 48 hours after a multi-day response, and she fully intends to sleep as much as she can until she has to be back at the base.

“Go away!” she yells into her pillows.

The knocking fades away, and she rolls over with a contented sigh, ready to drift back into sleep, when suddenly her phone starts to ring.

“Son of a--” she nearly throws her phone across the room and then answers it instead, because she can’t not answer her phone.

“Wake up!” Ruby yells from the phone. “Come on, we’re making brunch. Bring juice!”

Blake drops her phone and nearly falls off the side of the bed at the volume, too incoherent to respond before the call ends. She stares down at the phone on the floor, blinking slowly in the midmorning light, and settles it back onto her nightstand before flopping back onto the bed.

It rings again. 

“Ruby, I swear to God--”

“If they make me go to this, then so are you,” Weiss says through a yawn. “So get your ass up or I’ll knock on your door until you do.”

“I hate you,” Blake says into the phone. 

“I brought you tea,” Weiss counters.

“I do not hate you,” Blake says after a moment. Weiss may live in the same mid-tier apartment building as the rest of them, but her wealth shows through in a variety of ways, one of them being her ostentatiously expensive coffee and tea collection. “Two minutes.”

Five minutes later after the world’s shortest shower, Blake unlocks her door with one hand as the other tries pathetically to pull her wet hair up into a ponytail. Weiss opens the door without waiting, nearly crushing Blake’s foot, and Blake hops back with a yelp.

“This is not my fault so don’t give me that look,” Weiss says before Blake has even managed to grab the hair tie out from between her teeth to speak. “You know what they’re like. They wake up before the goddamned sun every day.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Blake says, finally wrangling her hair up off the back of her neck and holding her hands out greedily. “Gimme.”

“Ungrateful,” Weiss says haughtily, though the effect is ruined as she yawns again and holds a steaming mug out for Blake. “Bring juice, apparently Yang wants mimosas.”

“Of course she does,” Blake mumbles, inhaling deeply over her tea. She waves her free hand towards the fridge and leaves Weiss to find the juice as she shoves her feet into shoes.

The door to Yang and Ruby’s apartment is open when they make it downstairs, music drifting out of the speakers and the kitchen table already set for four. 

“There you are, beautiful,” Yang says, craning her head around from the kitchen and then doing an abrupt about face to meet them. Blake’s mouth goes dry just like it had when Yang had looked at her yesterday and agreed that they shouldn’t act on the fact that she kissed Blake enough to nearly set her on fire, but Yang just grabs the jug of grapefruit juice from Weiss’s hands and slaps a kiss to the side of it. “Took you long enough!”

Blake slides around her, carefully not touching the miles of skin exposed by her cutoff sleeves and running shorts, and takes a seat at the kitchen table and focuses on her tea instead. Weiss plops down as well, nearly burying herself in her coffee, and Blake welcomes the company and the distraction from the fact that Yang’s dancing in front of the stove while still managing to cook two omelettes at once, skin flushed from a run like it always is after they go on packouts for training. 

“Apparently they woke up at five and went for a run,” Weiss says, aghast. She props her chin in her hand and stares at the way Yang and Ruby are moving around the kitchen at warp speed, somehow never bumping into each other. 

“That’s disgusting,” Blake croaks out. It’s easy to focus on Weiss instead of the fact that Yang’s right there, beautiful and dangerous, something Blake can’t have and something she wants more than anything she can remember.

“Not my fault you’re both slackers,” Yang says cheerfully as she deposits an omelette on Weiss’s plate and one on Ruby’s. “Ruby, sit down and eat, you terror.” 

Ruby sticks her tongue out from the kitchen where she’s pouring a glass of juice for herself and mimosas for the rest of them. Yang grabs hers on the way back to the kitchen and starts the next two omelettes, and Ruby nearly upends the whole table when she sits down. 

“You really are a terror,” Blake informs her, even as she accepts the mimosa Ruby hands her.

“Cheers to that,” Weiss mutters, but makes no motion to do so, instead fixated on the omelette on her plate. 

By the time Yang slides an omelette onto her plate, Blake’s almost awake enough to feel like a real person instead of a sleepy collection of half-formed thoughts mostly intent on contemplating the way it might feel to kiss the skin right under Yang's ear that's exposed with her hair pulled up into a ponytail, almost awake enough to enjoy her food and talk like a human being. By the time they’ve finished eating and are on the second round of mimosas, she’s fully awake and it doesn’t feel like a chore anymore to just _be_ with her team instead of fixating on Yang’s lips the whole time. 

“I was going to go prep my gear today, you know,” Weiss says with a sigh, dropping her head back to stare lazily at the ceiling. “But now I’m pretty sure I can’t move at all.”

“You’re welcome,” Yang says graciously. “God knows your bony ass could use more good food.”

“Excuse you, not all of us _want_ to be a behemoth of a human,” Weiss snipes back at her, but there’s no bite to it and Blake snorts into her mimosa. 

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that, princess,” Yang says with a wink, and Blake’s pulse trips over itself. 

Weiss’s phone vibrates on the table, and she smiles down at it stupidly, a welcome distraction from the way Blake’s unable to look away from the fact that when Yang smiles the freckles on her cheeks seem to illuminate the whole room.

“Oh, is that your _girlfriend_?” Blake says, swiping for Weiss’s phone and missing terribly.

“You mean her world famous Olympic gold medalist world champion girlfriend?” Ruby picks up without missing a beat ,also grabbing for her phone. “Come on, answer it! We should get to meet her!”

“Absolutely not,” Wess says imperiously. “I’m going to take this at home. None of you are invited. Leave me alone.”

“Oh, so it’s phone sex, then,” Yang says, and grins when Weiss’s ears flush red. 

“I hate you,” Weiss informs her. 

“We only mock you because we love you,” Yang yells after her. She slumps back in her chair with a sigh, stretching her arms high over her head. “Swear to God, Ruby, I’m never going running with you again.”

“Not my fault you’re a wimp.” Ruby’s phone dings, and she lights up at the screen. “Oh, hey, that new suspension for the truck we ordered is in--”

“Go pick it up, if you want.” Yang waves her hand lazily towards the table. “I’ll clean up.”

“Really?” Ruby’s already bolted towards the door, keys in hand. “You’re the best!”

“And then there were two,” Yang says, sighing and groaning as she pushes up to her feet and starts gathering dishes.

“I’ll help,” Blake rushes out, because dishes are an easy distraction. 

“You don’t have to--”

“Let me,” Blake says over her, grabbing for her wrist to stop her from stacking plates. Her grip freezes the both of them in place, leaning over the table towards each other, because Yang’s skin is warm under her hand and Blake can feel the heavy edge to Yang’s pulse in her wrist.

“Okay,” Yang says faintly, not moving at all. Blake tells herself to move, to step back, to let go and stop herself from making any more mistakes than she already has, but instead her hand stays firm at Yang’s wrist and her weight shifts forward, free hand hooking into the collar of Yang’s shirt and tugging her closer.

“Teammates,” Yang mumbles. “We’re teammates.”

“Right,” Blake echoes softly, still leaning forward but with a hundred reasons why they shouldn’t do this on the tip of her tongue, but instead she just surges forward and kisses Yang like she has nothing to lose. The plate Yang had picked up clatters down onto the table, forgotten, and her hands grab for Blake’s waist and pull until they stumble and Blake’s hip crashes into the kitchen island.

Yang tastes like grapefruit and champagne and burns under her hands, flush with adrenaline and the way her mouth moves against Blake’s, a backdraft igniting under her skin, and Blake should walk away, should stop this from happening, because Blake has a lifetime of failures and accountabilities to make up for and sinking into the way Yang’s hands are dragging along her skin under her shirt and lips are burning at her throat when she has a wildfire steamrolling through residential communities to make right is not what she’s here for. 

She should stop. They’re teammates, in one of the most dangerous fields in the world, and they need to rely on each other in terrible situations, need to be equally reliable for Ruby and Weiss. She should stop, but instead one hand winds into Yang’s hair and the other shoves her around, pivoting until she can shove Yang against the wall and drag her lips along the line of her throat. Yang is a distraction, a hazard, a flashover ready to combust and ruin the both of them. She should know better than to let her stomach coil tight at the noise Yang makes when Blake bites at the underside of her jaw, should know better than to lean into something so dangerous as the way all the strength in Yang seems to concentrate into her arching spine when Blake’s nails drag down her stomach, should know that they’ll both be burned to the ground if they do this, but she’s spent her entire adult life running towards fires. 

She should stop, but instead she scrabbles for the waistband on Yang’s running shorts and drops her head onto Yang’s shoulder when a leg hikes up around her hip, sinking into the heat and ready to be burned up by it.

* * *

“We can’t do this,” Blake says firmly, but it loses weight to the way that she’s curled into Yang’s side on the couch, one hand on her stomach and head pillowed on her shoulder.

“Who says we can’t?” Yang says after a long moment. Her hand drags softly through Blake’s hair, drying into a tangled mess around her shoulders. A shiver races from Blake’s scalp down her spine, bare skin pricking in the open air. 

“We’re on a jump team together.” Blake closes her eyes and breathes in deep, savors the smell of soap and sweat and sex clinging to Yang’s skin, before reluctantly pulling away to sit up. Her shirt’s the first thing in reach, somehow, and she holds it to her chest as she looks for the rest of her clothes.

“Which means we trust each other,” Yang counters. She sits up as well and hands Blake’s jeans over to her, untangles her own shorts from them so she can wiggle into them. “That’s a _good_ thing, not a bad thing.”

“We’re on a jump team,” Blake says again. She stands up and pulls her jeans up over her hips, drags a hand through her hair with a frown. “It could throw the whole dynamic off--”

“Blake,” Yang says firmly. She tugs her shirt over her head and waits until Blake’s pulled hers on as well and then curls her hands around Blake’s wrists gently, holds her still and looks down at her, soft and warm and open, and Blake’s stomach twists around itself. “Our team is solid, no matter if you and I are sleeping together or not.”

Blake stares up at her, at the mass of golden hair hanging around her shoulders, tangled from the way Blake’s fingers had gripped into it as her hips pushed up into Yang’s mouth; at the bruise blooming along the edge of her tattoo; at the dark flush to her cheeks that had risen each time Blake had drawn an arch out of her spine. 

“Sleeping together,” Blake echoes after a moment. “Just-- just sex, right. Stress relief.”

Yang looks down at her for long seconds, more unreadable than ever, her mouth a firm line and hands calm at Blake’s wrists.

“Yeah,” Yang says eventually. “Stress relief.” She pulls her hands away from Blake’s wrists, takes half a step back and sets to pulling her masses of hair up into a ponytail. Blake watches her, unsure if she missed something desperately important or just dodged a bullet. Yang’s impassive as she finishes pulling her hair back and turns back to the kitchen table and the abandoned dishes. 

“Are you sure?” Blake says. She drags a hand over her face-- a mistake, because it smells like sex, smells like Yang, smells like the one mistake she’d been trying to avoid and the one she’s never been more grateful to make-- and then clears her throat, sets to stacking dishes on the table. “If you don’t want to--”

“I do,” Yang says, too loudly, and Blake nearly drops a fork. “I mean-- if you want to. We’re in a high-stress job, after all, and we already know each other, and trust each other.”

There’s an undercurrent to her words, something impassible and uncertain, something Blake finds familiar and terrifying, and Blake sets the stack of plates and cutlery down carefully on the table.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” she says slowly. “It complicates things. Even if it’s just sex.”

Yang is quiet, carefully arranging the coffee mugs into a line in front of her. Blake grips at the back of the chair in front of her, holds tight to it instead of reaching for Yang because this could never be just sex, she’s sure of it. There’s no way for her to pretend like she wants just a part of Yang, no way for her to convince herself that _just sex_ would be any more than just delaying the inevitable where she wanted everything from Yang like she’d always wanted things in her life, fully and desperately with her whole heart, the same way she’d been so sure she wanted Adam and everything he stood for all those years ago.

“Yeah,” Yang finally says. “You’re right.” She curls her hands into fists and leans them against the tabletop carefully. “It wouldn’t work.”

“Yeah,” Blake says faintly. Pride at her ability to distance herself falls short in the face of the fact that there’s a quiet sadness to the tilt of Yang’s smile, and her knuckles ache the harder she grips at the chair. “So it just-- won’t happen again, right?”

“Right.” Yang nods, taps the knuckles of one fist against the table, nods again. “It won’t happen again.”

“Okay,” Blake breathes out. Her eyes sting and her throat aches and she wants to touch Yang again, to push closer until the scalding heat that scares her so much burns her alive, just as certain that it would ruin everything as she’s certain that it would be worth it. 

“I’ll finish up here,” Yang says suddenly. “You probably have a lot to do today.”

She doesn’t, because none of them do. They’re all too invested in their work to do anything on days off but count the hours until they’re on call again. She has nothing at all to do today except clean her apartment and she could instead spend it with Yang, but she simply nods and clears her throat.

“I--yeah,” she says. “Lots of errands. But I can still help if you want.”

“No,” Yang says too loudly, and they both flinch back. “I mean-- it’s fine. I got it. I’ll see you when we’re back on call, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Blake echoes. “Okay.”

She makes it back up to her apartment before her posture breaks and she slumps back against the door, slides down to the floor and lets her head tip back against the doorframe and her breaths come shaking and loud. 

It’s the right thing to do. She’s sure of it. Yang is at best a distraction from the fact that Blake’s here to pay penance for a wildfire she sent raging across hundreds of peoples’ homes, at worst someone Blake could ruin with her greedy hands and filthy past. Today’s lapse in judgment aside, they’re on the same page, and it won’t happen again. 

It won’t happen again.

* * *

It happens again. 

The locker room is empty on a Tuesday night, and Yang’s the last one left changing. Blake doubles back to grab her running shoes, sending Ruby and Weiss on their way, and stops dead in the doorway when she sees Yang standing there by her locker, the ridged lines of muscle in her back standing out as she stretches after discarding her uniform shirt. Blake’s mouth dries up at the sight, the hard edges of muscle and the soft flowering edges of the tattoo the drags down from one shoulder keeping her pinned in place, and she lasts until Yang looks over her shoulder to see her and then her traitorous hands are locking the door behind her and meeting Yang in the middle. 

_One more is fine_ , she assures herself as she drops her head back against the metal of the lockers and groans too loudly when Yang’s fingers sink into her. It won’t happen again.

* * *

It happens again, and again, and again. In the locker room and in the deserted gym, in Yang’s truck, in Blake’s bed, in Weiss’s bathroom. June turns into July turns into August, and Blake tells herself every time that it won’t happen again, that she can stop, that she can walk away from the way she now knows every tell in Yang’s body and still keep their team and her career intact, stop herself from muddying Yang’s life. It won’t happen again, except that it does, over and over and over.

“Fuck,” she gasps out, fingers curling into Yang’s hair, Yang’s head buried in the side of her neck and breath skidding hot over her collarbone. She whines when Yang pulls her hand free, her belt buckle rattling, and she slowly comes back to herself enough to remember that they’re in the gear room, in the middle of an on-call shift.

“Fuck,” she mutters again, and slides out from between Yang and the workbench she’d been pressed against. “That was-- we shouldn’t--”

“Blake,” Yang says quietly, aching, and Blake’s fingers slip on her own belt buckle at the sound. “We keep saying it won’t happen again, but it keeps-- we have to _talk_ about--”

“It won’t--”

She’s cut off by the dispatch alarm going off, and another swear drops from her lips. Yang sighs and straightens her own clothes, wipes her hand on a shop towel and drops it into the bin on the way out the door. Blake’s been properly respectful of fire and its dangers since the minute she realized that she and Adam had caused a wildfire, but she’s never been more grateful for it than she is now.

They gear up quickly, quietly, listening as Yatsu briefs them on the call as they hurry out to the plane as a team. Blake takes her seat next to Ruby, a carefully selected buffer from Yang and the way her body still buzzes from Yang’s hands on her, and straps in with steady hands. The plane is buffeted around in the wind, the sun almost ready to start setting.

They’ve responded to enough fires at this point that Blake’s stopped counting. Late afternoon jumps are her least favorite, the wind and heavy shadows a complication she’d rather avoid. She watches as the gear crate drops and then follows her team out into the sky, tucking her body in tight and praying she can avoid the trees as she lands. 

There’s no time to talk once they land. They have maybe two hours of daylight left, and Blake detaches from her chute and bundles it away haphazardly as she starts off, the eight of them practically running towards the gear crate’s dropsite. 

“You know the drill,” Yatsu says as they distribute gear. “Ruby, take your team east, we’ll go west and meet up in the middle. I don’t have to tell you that we have to move fast on this one. I don’t like the look of those clouds.”

Blake accepts the ax Yang hands her blindly, glancing up at the clouds darkening the sky above them. Clouds like that rarely bring rain without lightning first, and lightning can start worse fires than a rainstorm can always put out. She pulls her gloves tighter on her hands and resettles her helmet and breathes in deep, pulling in the scent of smoke and dirt and distant rain.

“Let’s go,” Ruby says firmly. There’s none of her bright enthusiasm when they’re on a call, and her silver eyes are calm, her mouth set into a firm line. She trades her chainsaw for Weiss’s pulaski. “Work fast, but be careful.”

The four of them move quickly as a unit, Weiss with the chainsaw in the front and Ruby with the pulaski in the back, Blake and Yang in the middle with axes making up the difference. They’ve done this enough times by now that they don’t need to talk, and Blake moves in easy tandem with Yang, constantly aware of where her body and ax are and trusting inherently that Yang knows the same. However complicated they might have let themselves get outside of work, on a call they’re precisely in tune, and they stay hot on Weiss’s heels as she sets out the edges of the fireline.

An hour in, they switch, and Yang takes the chainsaw while Blake takes the pulaski. It’s filthy, back-breaking work like always, but the increasing winds and increasing rumbles of thunder keep adrenaline high across the four of them. 

They’ve made solid progress on the circumference fireline, Yatsu’s team almost in sight, when a flash of lightning splits the sky open. There’s a crack of thunder right on its heels, and then suddenly another lightning strike sends a pine tree careening down barely ten feet in front of Yang. Sparks shower off of the branches as it crashes through other trees and into the ground, and the twenty yards of fireline left to close the circumference goes up in flames.

“Fuck!” Yang scrambles back, nearly dropping the chainsaw, and Blake’s heartbeat crashes against her chest for a brief moment before she realizes that Yang was clear of the fall. Any relief immediately evaporates as the ignited tree sends sparks flying high into the air, and half of them start burning higher branches of the neighboring trees.

“You guys okay?” Ruby snaps into the radio, stretching up on her toes to see if Yatsu’s team is visible.

“We’re good,” Yatsu’s voice cracks over the radio. 

“It’s crowning.” Ruby stares up at the fire burning above them. 

“Get out now,” Yatsu says. “Ditch the gear and head north. We’re a mile from a river. We’ll meet you there.”

“You heard him.” Ruby shoves her radio away and discards her chute pack. “Drop everything and run.” 

Blake’s skin goes cold despite the accelerating fire around them as she shoves her pack away and drops her pulaski. She pauses only to make sure the others dropped their packs as well and then the four of them set off at a dead run. It’s a dense, dry forest, and there’s only so fast that they can move, roots practically reaching out to trip them. Blake stumbles over a rock and nearly falls, only staying on her feet because Weiss hauls her up by the arm without breaking stride next to her; ten seconds later it’s Weiss who slips and Blake barely manages to keep them both upright. 

On a good day Blake can run a seven minute mile in full gear without feeling like her lungs will explode. By the time the break in the trees by the river is visible, her heart aches and lungs burn and her helmet has never felt heavier. Ahead of her are Ruby and Yang, Yang barreling through bush and breaking a path for the rest of them with her powerful shoulders; Weiss is right on her heels, breaths coming heavy and aching just like Blake’s; barely a tenth of a mile behind her is the fire, catching on treetops and sprinting towards them.

There’s a crashing sound to the left, and Blake chances a look over to see that it’s Yatsu’s team, barreling towards the river just like they are. Blake glances back to make sure Weiss is still there, grim determination on her sharp features, and it redoubles the strength in Blake’s legs as she surges forward. The narrow banks of the river are visible now past Ruby and Yang, the fire chasing them faster, and just as a triumphant yell sounds from Yang up ahead as she splashes into the shallow river with Ruby right behind her, there’s an enormous crack behind them and Blake looks back to see another lightning-struck tree toppling towards her and Weiss. 

Blake pivots without thinking, because her teammate is right there behind her, because Weiss boots are slipping on a bed of dry pine needles and she doesn’t have any traction to change direction quickly enough, and dives at Weiss. There’s a different sort of crack and a yell when they land, pain blooming in her head, but the burning treetop crashes down right where they’d both been standing a split second earlier. 

“Shit,” Weiss gasps out, cradling her arm towards her chest, and Blake reaches for her, tries to pull them both up, but her legs collapse under her and her view of Ruby and Yang and the river blurs into triplicate. Weiss’s voice shatters in her ears as Blake blinks and falls the rest of the way back to the forest floor. Above her, the trees are burning, and Weiss is hauling her up with a yell, and somewhere in the distance she can almost hear Yang’s voice, and then Blake passes out.

* * *

Blake swims towards consciousness slowly, and then quickly, eyes jerking open to reveal a too-bright sky blurring into cloudy white light, and she tries to sit up because the forest is burning around her and she has to get out, has to get to her team--

“Hey, hey, calm down.” 

That’s Ruby, her voice calmer than Blake’s ever heard, and her body relaxes on command because Ruby’s been leading their team for months and every part of Blake reacts without thinking when Ruby talks like a leader. 

“What happened?”

Blake blinks slowly, and then again, and again, until her vision clarifies and she can see the ceiling of a hospital room above her. She tries to sit up and falls back immediately, head swimming and the room tilting around her, and Ruby suddenly appears in her vision. Her face is still streaked with dirt, hair matted from her helmet, a cut under one eye. 

“You hit your head pretty hard,” Ruby says gently, gripping at Blake’s hand. “Right before you made it to the river. The doctor says you have a concussion, but you should be fine.”

Blake blinks again, squinting until the three overlapping copies of Ruby she can see solidify into one slightly blurry one. Her mouth feels gummy and useless, her throat aching. She thinks back to the last thing she can remember-- Yang, burning under her hands, kissing her and hauling her up against the workbench, lips on her throat and hands on her skin-- and lets out an undignified croak as she pushes past the memory, dragging herself forward in time. The lightning strikes and the crowning fire, the decision to abandon their gear and run for safety from a fire they couldn’t control, a tree falling towards her and Weiss, and then nothing but flashes of consciousness as she was carried out of the forest, loaded into a transport, moved to an ambulance.

“Is Weiss okay?” Blake’s eyes fly open and she tries to sit up again, and falls right back down onto the bed like the first time with a groan. “Fuck.”

“Everyone is okay,” Ruby says firmly. “Weiss fractured her wrist, and the rest of us have some cuts and bruises, but we’re okay. Everyone is okay. The base dropped another couple of teams in further downhill to cut a new line.”

“Okay,” Blake rasps out. The room swims around her, a whole chorus of needles splintering behind her eyes and her stomach churning, and she drags her free hand up to drop over her eyes. 

“How are you feeling?” Ruby squeezes her hand and then lets go and puts the hospital bed remote into it instead. “If you want to sit up.”

Blake peels her arm off of her eyes and squints down at the remote, stabbing experimentally with her thumb until she finds the one that slowly drags the head of the bed up and her useless body along with it. 

“Totally awesome,” Blake says over the whir of the bed. She doesn’t even try to lie convincingly. “I fell off a third story balcony once during a house fire. It felt about as good.”

“One of the first calls I went on with Yang, she got cocky clearing a house and stepped out onto a balcony that was rotting and fell straight through it, but her shoulders got stuck and she was just hanging there like a ragdoll,” Ruby says, leaning back in her chair and folding her arms over her chest. There’s a hint of a smile on her lips, and it settles Blake’s pulse, takes the edge off the pain. Her team is safe. “We got her out, but not before we got a _lot_ of pictures of her hanging from the deck.”

“You said you’d take that story to the grave, you know,” Yang says from the doorway, mirroring Ruby’s posture and looking down her nose at the both of them. “Stop making me look bad in front of Blake, you monster.”

She leans against the doorjamb and frowns down at Ruby, absolutely put upon, and Ruby sticks her tongue out, and Blake laughs quietly. It spears through her head immediately and she peters off into a groan, pressing her hands into her eyes and holding her breath until the worst of it passes 

“Rubes, can you go talk Weiss out of talking the doctor out of putting her arm in a cast? She’s like three minutes away from convincing him and won’t listen to me.” 

Blake drags her hands away from her eyes slowly, blinking over to where Yang’s moved further into the room and Ruby’s already standing. Ruby glances back at her and then leans over the edge of the hospital bed, hugging Blake awkwardly. Blake closes her eyes and smiles into Ruby’s shoulder, holding on as tight as she dares without aggravating her head.

“Big damn hero,” Ruby says, teasing and bright as she pulls away, and she digs an elbow into Yang’s side on her way out of the room. Blake watches the doorway well after Ruby’s left, mind scattered with pain and fatigue.

“How’re you feeling?” Yang’s voice pulls her out of her stare, dragging her back to the present as Yang sits down in the chair Ruby had been occupying. She folds her hands into her lap and then crosses her arms over her chest instead, thumb drumming rapidly against her bicep. Blake stares at the motion of her thumb, the movement of skin and bone and muscle in her hand, and her throat goes dry because the last time she’d been so focused on Yang’s hand they’d wound up fucking against a workbench in the gear room.

“Could be worse,” Blake manages to say. She glances up towards Yang’s eyes and knows immediately that it’s a mistake, because Yang’s carefully not looking at her, jaw clenched and eyes shadowed. The worst of the dirt from the jump has been scrubbed off her face and hands, but there’s still a smudged line in the shadow of her jaw, the same spot Blake had kissed earlier today that had dragged a shudder down Yang’s spine, and Blake’s fingers twitch towards it. 

“You had us worried,” Yang says quietly. “I-- we thought you’d hurt your spine, but you kept fighting us when we tried to put a cervical collar on you.”

Blake’s skin goes cold and her hands snap into fists in her lap. She stares down at them, a safer anchor point than Yang and the way she’s looking at Blake carefully, like she might bolt, like she’s a wounded animal backed into a corner.

There might be something to that, if Blake’s honest with herself. She’s always felt like there’s something inside her, something that drives her forward so single mindedly, that charges her need to provide balance for the worst choices in her life, something so inescapable it might as well be primal.

“Blake, look at me,” Yang says. She leans her elbows onto her knees and drags her palms over her face, waits until Blake breathes in deep and steels herself against the way her brain rattles in her skull at it and finally looks up. “If there’s something you want to talk about, ever, I-- you can trust me. You can trust us.”

Blake opens her mouth and nearly lets it out, nearly spills everything she’s been hiding away-- the fire and Adam, the way he’d loomed over her for years and kept her in line with promises that inevitably turned into palms cracking against her cheek, the one time he’d squeezed at her throat until spots of white invaded her vision, all because she’d challenged him in front of the others-- but instead she closes her eyes again and breathes in slowly, shallowly, until she can master her heartbeat and steady her wavering breaths.

Yang is still waiting patiently at her bedside when Blake opens her eyes, a sad downturn to her mouth echoed in her eyes. She reaches out and lets one hand rest on Blake’s knee under the blankets, gentle and unassuming, and Blake nearly sobs out loud at how soft her touch is.

“You know,” Yang says eventually. Her thumb drags over the blankets, the movement tracking back and forth over Blake’s kneecap, and Blake closes her eyes and leans her head back against the bed, too tired to pretend she doesn’t want Yang’s touch. She doesn’t deserve it, but she craves it, in any form she can get, and she sinks into the rhythmic movement of Yang’s hand. “Ruby and I are half-sisters. My birth mom dumped me on Dad’s doorstep when I was two months old and disappeared.”

Blake peels her eyes open slowly, stares at Yang who’s staring at her hand on Blake’s leg, eyes distant and voice soft, barely louder than the background beeps of Blake’s heart monitor. 

“I was fine with it, when I found out,” Yang carries on. “My parents are great, and Ruby’s amazing, and I had a really great childhood.”

Her thumb catches on a wrinkle in the blanket and she pauses, frowns down at it, and Blake’s lungs constrict at the way Yang’s frown burns into Blake’s chest almost as much as her smile does. 

“Ruby skipped two grades,” Yang says, and the pivot makes Blake’s head spin for a split second. “We’d been in the same grade since I was nine, because she was already great at school. So we graduated high school together. And we both got into Berkeley, and it’s the only place I wanted to go to, but then Ruby got into MIT and was thinking hard about it and I just...lost it.”

Yang pulls her hand back and Blake’s head snaps up from where she’d been staring at Yang’s hand on her knee, an unbidden protest building in her throat, but before she can say anything Yang’s straightened the blanket over it and set her hand back at Blake’s knee. 

“I’d spent so long telling myself I was fine about what my birth mom did.” There’s an edge to Yang’s voice, something almost bitter, and Blake stares at her in wonder because in all the months that she’s known Yang, in every situation they’ve been in together-- training in the mud and the baking heat; dehydrated and exhausted after too-long packouts; deciding together, so surely together, that _together_ isn’t something they can be, even as it’s dimmed Yang’s eyes every time Blake affirmed it-- she’s never heard Yang sound _bitter_. 

“I was so sure I wasn’t bothered by the fact that she abandoned me, but then when it looked like Ruby was going to go to a school I hadn’t even applied to, I-- it wasn’t good,” Yang says mysteriously. “I had a lot I needed to talk about. And if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to get past the fact that my birth mom left me.”

There’s a protracted pause, long enough that Blake finally looks back up. Yang’s staring right at her, mouth pressed into a thin line and eyes sharp, piercing and biting and wholly unwavering, and Blake wilts under her gaze. She blinks back down at her hands and clenches at the blankets. Her hands are still dirty, ash and dirt ground into her skin, and it leaves smudges on the blankets.

“I’m sorry,” Blake says eventually, because there’s nothing else she can think of to say, no words she can pull together to respond to Yang’s admission or to admit that there’s so much she’s never spoken of herself. “I’m so sorry you had to deal with that.” 

Yang sighs and slumps back in her chair, leaving a cold spot on Blake’s knee, even under the blanket, when her hand drags away. 

“That’s not-- come on, Blake,” she says. There’s a pleading edge to her voice, something new and horrifying that slides under Blake’s skin and drags at her muscles, cramping and uncomfortable, so uncomfortable Blake can feel it in her teeth. “I’m not looking for sympathy. I’ve made my peace with all of that. But there’s _obviously_ something you’re dealing with and I just wish you would fucking talk to me because we’re--”

She cuts herself off and scrubs her hands over her face, letting out a heavy breath and slumping further down in the chair until her head drops back and she can stare at the ceiling. It’s not until Yang’s fully looking away that Blake can pull her gaze up from her hands and over to where Yang’s head is craned back. Her mouth goes dry at the sight of Yang’s throat, bared and within reach, and something stirs deep in her belly that she tries to push away, something she’s been trying and failing to ignore for so long, something that she’s given in to every time they’ve been alone and Yang has looked at her with a slow smile and intention and _want_ burning in her eyes. 

No one’s ever looked at Blake like that, like she wants Blake half as much as Blake wants her. No one except Adam has ever looked at her like that. 

Blake’s mouth opens without her consent and she nearly speaks, nearly gives in to the flashover that is every time she’s touched Yang and held Yang and pushed her against a wall until she could kiss her like it could save her life, nearly spills the whole story of her guilt and her fear and how it’s been more than a decade but sometimes she can still feel Adam’s breath on her neck and his hands at her throat.

“I’m sorry,” is all she says instead, because it’s the closest she can get to _I don’t want to ruin you_. Yang pulls her head back down, leans her cheek against one fist. There’s a smile on her lips but there’s no heat to it, none of the bright burning warmth that lights Blake from the inside out. 

“Yeah,” Yang says. “Me too.” She pushes up to her feet with a groan and a stretch, towering over Blake in her hospital bed, and grips lightly at the railing separating them. Blake looks up at her, head aching at the effort, and Yang shakes her head and leans past the railing until she can plant one hand on the elevated mattress above Blake’s shoulder. 

Air catches in Blake’s throat, bubbling and uncomfortable, and she’s positive she’s about to lose consciousness again with how close Yang is, but instead Yang just leans further over the railing and curls her free hand along the far side of Blake’s jaw. 

Blake inhales sharply, Yang’s touch slow and scalding against her skin, and she opens her mouth to speak-- _We’re teammates, we’re a bad idea, I’m no good for this_ \-- but is cut off when Yang’s lips brush against her cheek, just shy of the corner of her mouth.

The kiss heats like a brand on her skin, and Blake stares stupidly up at Yang as she straightens up again and steps back, shoves her hands into her pockets and shrugs her broad shoulders.

“I’m going to go find the doctor and see when you can get out of here,” she says, stepping back towards the hallway. Blake stares after her, overheated and concussed and reeling still at Yang and _I just wish you would fucking talk to me_. She hasn’t felt so unbalanced since the day she left Adam, running along a highway in the middle of the night with nothing but a handful of cash and a Social Security card in her pocket. She’s fought fires and rappelled out of helicopters and jumped out of planes, but nothing has left her so timid as the way Yang looks at her like she’s worth caring about.

“Wait,” Blake says, looking up fast enough that her vision blurs and nausea swoops in her stomach. She squeezes her eyes shut and holds her breath until the nausea passes, deciding abruptly that she owes Yang more, that she owes her better, that she can _be_ better than a mismatched collection of broken parts held together by guilt and determination. She can be more than this and it can start with coming clean to Yang.

“Sorry?”

She opens her eyes too quickly, earning herself another churn in her stomach, but it’s not Yang’s voice. There’s a nurse standing in the doorway, puzzled, and Blake slumps back into her bed. She was too slow to speak up. Yang’s already sent a doctor in to see her.

“Sorry,” Blake says thickly. “I-- never mind. Sorry.”

The nurse frowns but ignores her, bustling around the bed to check her IV bag. Blake lets her eyes unfocus and fall shut until the ceiling disappears and the aching in her head lessens. It’s for the best that she missed her chance. Bravery is always a mistake.


	4. Chapter 4

> _venturi effect:_ the creation of a partial vacuum using a constricted fluid flow

Weiss drives her home from the hospital two days later, after Blake lost every argument with the doctors who insisted her concussion was bad enough to warrant supervised rest for 48 hours. Yang had offered, but with half their team out of commission she and Ruby had been temporarily reassigned to another jump team, and she was on call again. Blake drops into Weiss’s car with a whine and fumbles with her sunglasses, the sunlight beating angrily against the ache in her head, and she leans her head back against the leather of the seat and sighs.

“Your car is so swanky,” she mumbles, for lack of anything else to say. Weiss hums absently as she fumbles with the keys, the cast on her wrist impeding her ability to hold onto them. It’s a short drive back to the apartment complex, the hospital closer to it than the base is, and Blake sighs as the car stops. “Thank you for the ride.”

“Thank you for shoving me out of the way of a burning tree,” Weiss says drily. She’s out of the car and around to Blake’s door before Blake can get her seatbelt unbuckled. 

“What, I only get rides if I save your life?” It hurts more than she wants to admit to keep her tone light, her entire skull aching and her vision swimming, and Weiss grants her no quarter, scoffing and rolling her eyes even as she helps Blake out of the car.

“You got me,” Weiss deadpans. “One ride per life saving incident only. The rest of the time you’re on your own.”

Blake leans against the side of the car, one hand digging into her pocket in search of her keys, and the sound of them rattling in her hand echoes deep in her skull. She frowns down at them as the blurred lines of them in her palm disappear into one another, unable to tell her deadbolt key from her door key from her mail key.

“Come on,” Weiss says, gentle as she takes the keys out of Blake’s hand, and Blake lets out a sigh that crashes through her whole body and tilts the ground under her feet. “Stop being stubborn and let me help you, okay?”

“I’m not stubborn,” Blake mumbles. She lets Weiss wrap an arm around her waist and direct her towards the building and leans heavily into her side. “See?”

“Of course not,” Weiss says. She keeps an arm around Blake’s waist as she unlocks the door and then practically carries her into the apartment. “Couch or bed?”

“Couch is closer.” Blake pours herself onto the couch, convinced her entire body has liquified. She doesn’t protest when Weiss pulls her boots off and manhandles her into a more comfortable position and pulls the blinds down, the dimmer light a welcome reprieve. “I feel like I went on a ten year bender.”

“Shocking, isn’t it.” Weiss’s voice is thin but her hands are gentle as she pulls the blanket off the back of the couch and settles it over Blake. Blake cracks one eye to look up at her, standing there in Blake’s living room with one arm in a cast, staring down at Blake with an unreadable expression.

“You okay?” Exhaustion pulls at her words, but Blake pulls herself up to sitting.

“I’m fine,” Weiss says immediately. “Do you want some tea?”

She doesn’t wait for an answer, pivoting on one heel and marching into the kitchen. 

“Ruby and Yang are on call for another few days, but I talked to Yatsu and he’s going to check in on you. His house is only a few miles away.” Weiss moves around Blake’s kitchen easily, putting a kettle on to boil and prepping a mug of tea for her. “Also, your fridge is full of food, because Yang doesn’t think you can feed yourself, and honestly she’s right--”

“Why is Yatsu checking in on me?” Blake says from her sprawl on the couch. She opens one eye to peer at Weiss, who pauses in her brisk ordering of Blake’s mess of a tea drawer.

“I have to go out of town for a little while,” Weiss says after a moment. 

“What?” Blake wrinkles her nose, parsing the words slowly in her concussed head. “Did I know about this and forget it?”

“No,” Weiss says. She frowns down at the tea drawer. “It’s sudden. I have to go deal with some--family issues.”

“That sounds ominous,” Blake mumbles. She forces her other eye open and manages to sit up straighter. Weiss hasn’t spoken about her family since the day they finished training. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s complicated,” Weiss says with a huff. “My illustrious father is trying to line up a lawsuit for defamation and I have to give a statement to the lawyers, which apparently I can’t do over the phone, for some godforsaken reason.”

“No offense, but isn’t you dad always suing someone for defamation?”

“Obviously.” Weiss rolls her eyes and pours hot water into the mug. “But this is related to the fire that started at one of his construction sites years ago, and apparently it’s important for me to comment on it, as a firefighter. I don’t know.”

Blake’s mouth goes dry. She’s kept tabs on every major wildfire in the country since she left the White Fang and on the SDC, constantly aware of the possibility that if anyone ever found out what had really happened that her entire life would fall to pieces. There’s only one fire that the SDC has ever been blamed for, and it’s the one she and Adam started, the one that ripped through hundreds of acres of forest and three towns and coated the west coast in smoke for weeks.

“Why now?” she manages to say. Weiss shrugs as she carries a mug of tea back into the living room and sets it on a coaster on Blake’s ratty coffee table

“I don’t know.” Weiss frowns down at her cast and picks at one edge of it, perches on the edge of the couch next to Blake. “There may be some new information my father’s lawyers dug up. Presumably they think if they can prove defamation then they can try and recoup the fines they were charged. If I had to guess, at least.”

“They think someone else started it?” Blake says slowly. Panic whirs in her chest, waging war against the pain from her concussion. 

“My father thinks the world is out to get him.” Weiss rolls her eyes and settles her hands neatly atop her knees. “Obviously being a billionaire means he’s a target and he has to safeguard against all possible threats to his property and name. It couldn’t possibly be because of his shady business practices or overall horrifying personality.” 

Blake stares uncertainly at Weiss’s profile, sharp and familiar, as familiar as her own at this point, as Yang’s, as Ruby’s. For years she’d massaged her guilt into something workable, fuel for the engine that kept her driving forward at every setback, because for all that the mistakes she made were her own, the blame had landed on a name that had done far more damage to the world than Blake ever could.

But then: then there was Weiss. Weiss who had fought through training with her, who Blake had learned to trust, to care for like family in a way that no one-- not her squad in Portland, not her helitack teams-- had since before Blake followed Adam away from the White Fang and into the worst decisions of her life. Weiss is family, just like Ruby is family, just like Yang. She dove in front of a falling tree for Weiss because Weiss is family, and the whole of her family had carried her out of the woods to the nearest access road when Blake was too concussed to stand up on her own.

The constant guilt living behind her sternum, the focal point for every step forward she’s ever made, the anchor that’s turned malleable and tumultuous since the first time Blake kissed Yang on the roof of a parked airplane months ago, shifts again, and nausea swoops in Blake’s stomach.

“You don’t like my family very much, do you?” Weiss’s voice cuts through the swirl of Blake’s uncertainty, and Blake’s head turns too fast for her bruised brain and she regrets it immediately. 

“I--”

“Come on,” Weiss says with a huff. “Aren’t we past the point where you need to pretend that you didn’t nearly have a heart attack the minute you realized my family runs the worst climate offender in the world?”

“Are we?” Blake croaks out. 

“It may have escaped your notice,” Weiss says wryly. “But I don’t exactly like them very much, either. My father’s been trying to disown me for years for walking away from the company to be a firefighter. I haven’t been in the same room as him since the day I joined the hotshots.”

“I’m sorry,” Blake mumbles, slumping back into the couch. A distant ache, one she’s locked away for years, comes roaring to the forefront. She hasn’t seen her parents since she was twelve years old.

“He’s a terrible person,” Weiss says. She resettles the blanket over Blake’s lap briskly. “I’m going to this deposition because I fully believe that he’s to blame for that fire and I became a firefighter specifically because of the damage it caused, directly or otherwise, and I want it on record that I don’t support him or his business practices.”

Blake stares at Weiss, thunderstruck and unsteady, and before she can stop herself, before reason or caution can work their way through the clouds of uncertainty in her head, speaks.

“I used to be part of the White Fang,” she blurts out. “I grew up there.”

Weiss freezes, blanket still in hand and hovering over Blake’s lap. “What?”

“The environmentalist group,” Blake says helplessly. “It--”

“I know what it is.” Weiss settles the blanket more precisely over Blake’s legs and pulls back, puts space between them, folds her hands over her knees as best she can with one of them in a cast. 

“It wasn’t always-- it was just a bunch of families trying to live carbon neutral, at first,” Blake says, the words tumbling out of her. “I was four when it started. I grew up there. It was just protests and petitions and-- it wasn’t always--”

“Dangerous?” Weiss says evenly. One eyebrow lifts, her mouth an unreadable line, and Blake bunches the edges of the blankets into her fists. 

“Yeah,” she says after a long moment. “It was never supposed to be aggressive or dangerous or anything like that.”

“The White Fang bombed one of my father’s refineries two years ago.” Weiss doesn’t move, solid and unwavering, her voice calm in a way Blake’s never heard before. “Two security guards were injured. Fifty people were laid off to cover the costs of rebuilding it.”

“I know,” Blake whispers. “I mean, I read about it, I didn’t-- I left when I was seventeen. I haven’t spoken to any of them since then.”

There’s a long silence from Weiss’s side of the couch. Blake grips at the blanket, hands weak and body weaker, though if it’s from the concussion or the fact that she hasn’t spoken a word aloud about the White Fang in over a decade, she can’t tell. There’s a calculating edge to the level stare in Weiss’s eyes, the one she has when they’re just about to jump, when she’s considering wind speed and jump height and the likelihood of her tiny frame being buffeted around even more than the rest of theirs when they jump. 

Admissions beat against the back of Blake’s teeth, clamoring to pour out now that one of them has been set free. On a better day, on a day when she was less exhausted and more coherent, when she wasn’t as turned about by injury as she was the constant fact that her hands forever itch to reach for Yang to steady herself, she might be able to stop them. 

Instead, she speaks again, teetering on the edge of letting loose the worst thing she ever did. “The person your father’s suing. Do you know who it is?”

Weiss’s jaw flexes, eyes flashing blue, and in an instant Blake can see her putting the pieces together. Blake bites down on the inside of her cheek until she tastes blood, wanting to pull the words back, waiting for Weiss to speak, wishing for anything at all to turn the last two days around.

“I do know who the lawsuit is against,” Weiss says slowly, carefully. She winds her fingers together in her lap and glances down at them, looks back up to Blake deliberately. “But if you’re about to tell me that you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that someone besides my father’s company was directly responsible for that wildfire, I don’t want you to. I want to go to this deposition and say honestly under oath that I do not know who is responsible, because whether or not my father is responsible for _this_ atrocity, he is responsible for far more than anyone knows and I will not see him come out of this feeling remotely victorious.”

Blake stares at her, mouth dropping open and hands clenching tight at the blanket. “What?”

“After the fines were levied against the SDC for that fire,” Weiss says. She’s still speaking precisely, still looking unblinkingly at Blake. “There were stipulations put in place to allow the company to continue operating in high risk areas. Safety standards, and precautions, that have been proven to be dramatically effective and have stopped more than one potential fire. If my father wins this case, there is a not insignificant chance they would be rescinded. And that would be worse for everyone.”

Blake stares dumbly at her, blinking owlishly and trying to parse through everything Weiss just said. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Blake,” Weiss says with a huff. “I’m not an idiot, and I also know you pretty well, I’d say. We jump out of planes together, for God’s sake. I can tell when you’re about to get something off your chest. I could tell before you even brought up the White Fang that you were about to let _something_ loose. I just thought it was going to be you finally admitting that you’ve been sleeping with Yang for months.”

Blake gapes at her like a fish. “I--am not?”

“Oh, please,” Weiss mutters. “You had sex in my _bathroom_ during movie night and thought I didn’t notice? Give me some credit, will you?”

“Oh,” Blake says stupidly, heat crawling across her cheeks. “I-- sorry?”

“You broke the towel rack.” Weiss moves to fold her arms over her chest, to settle into the sharp accusatory posture she uses so frequently to cajole them all into behaving when they’re being unruly, only to be stopped by the cast. She scowls down at it and shifts until she can prop an elbow on the back of the couch instead. “You two aren’t exactly subtle.”

“Right,” Blake says. “I mean, it’s not-- we aren’t--”

“What you two do in your spare time is your business,” Weiss says firmly. “As long as it doesn’t affect us on a jump, I’m not worried. We’re a _team_ , and I trust the both of you with my life when we’re out on a call. Demonstrably,” she adds as an afterthought, brandishing her fractured wrist and the cast in Blake’s direction. 

“Oh,” Blake says again, stupidly, uselessly. She picks at the edges of the blanket. Her hands are scrubbed clean from the fire, but her nails are still edged with ground in ash, forever dirty. “We’re not-- we didn’t mean to. Because we work together. It’s not going to happen again.”

“Sure,” Weiss says with the most arrogant grin Blake’s ever seen on her. “I totally buy that. How many times have you said it’s not going to happen again?”

Blake’s sure her entire face is as red as it’s ever been, heat high on her cheeks bleeding down her throat, and she clears her throat aggressively. 

“I mean,” she starts to say, and then wilts immediately. “Fine. It’s probably going to keep happening.”

“Of course it is,” Weiss says primly. “You two can’t stop eye-fucking each other _ever_ unless we’re jumping out of a plane or in the middle of fighting a fire. It’s honestly ridiculous.” She laughs when Blake makes an indecipherable noise and relaxes into the couch. 

“You should talk to her,” Weiss says after a moment of Blake wishing she could fall into a sinkhole and never return. “Really talk about what you two want. Because you two are _good_ together, Blake. You look at her like she’s the best thing that ever happened to you, and so does she.”

“But the team,” Blake says weakly. “You and Ruby--”

“You really think that, one, Ruby doesn’t already know, and two, that the both of us don’t trust the both of you?” Weiss rolls her eyes so much her entire body shifts. “If you weren’t concussed I’d hit you for being stupid.”

“But what if it screws things up?” Blake pushes the blanket off her legs, the flush surely painting her entire body overheating her under the wool. 

“You saved my life yesterday,” Weiss says with a shrug. “Even though it would have been easier and safer for you to just move to the side, you turned back and helped me. And you think I don’t trust you?”

“Oh,” Blake says hesitantly. “Really?”

“Yes, really, _God_.” Weiss lets out an aggravated breath and pushes up to standing so she can glare down at Blake. “Literally the only thing that worries me about this is that you seem to be doubting your own judgment about it, because we’re smokejumpers, Blake. You have to trust yourself if the rest of the team is going to trust you.”

“But you already said you trust me,” Blake says, like an idiot, because she doesn’t know how not to be, apparently.

“Yes, well.” Weiss snatches her car keys up from the coffee table. “I might consider rescinding that if you and Yang haven’t sorted your shit out by the time I get back from New York. You have a week. Use it wisely.”

She wrinkles her nose imperiously, somehow, and pivots on one heel towards the door.

“Weiss,” Blake says, lunging forward until she can stand up. The floor tilts under her and she drops back down onto the couch with a curse. “I-- thank you.”

“We’re a team,” Weiss says stiffly. “We’re a _family_ , the four of us. So I want you both to be happy, and if being together is what makes you happy, then that’s what I want you to do.”

She nods perfunctorily and marches out of the door before Blake can speak. Blake stares at the door for long seconds after it shuts behind Weiss, trying to organize her muddied thoughts, to categorize _Yang_ and _family_ and _Weiss_ and _I don’t want you to tell me who’s responsible_. Her tea’s cold by the time she manages to move enough to pick it up, the shadows gone long across her apartment, and she bypasses the tea for her phone. It takes her longer than she wants to admit, even to herself alone in her apartment, to type out the text message.

Yang and Ruby are on call for another three days. That’s three days Blake has to prepare herself for the conversation they need to have, to walk back every moment she’s told herself she has to hold herself back from Yang. Three days before she has to be ready to admit she was wrong, to admit how much she wants Yang, in her bed in the mornings and in her kitchen making coffee. Three days to prepare for the flashover and determine how to react, to temper it, to let it ignite and then harness it.

She checks the text once more, twice more, a third time, before hitting send and dropping her phone from uncertain fingers. _Can we talk when you get back? I want more from this._

Yang is on call for another three days. She’s likely out on a jump, phone packed away and only a radio for communication outside her team. There won’t be a response for hours, maybe at all depending on how busy it is--

Her phone vibrates on the coffee table. Once, and then once more. Blake stares down it for long seconds, willing herself to move but wholly unprepared to do so because so long as she doesn’t look at Yang’s response, so long as it’s still unknown, she can tell herself that things will work out perfectly. 

She finally moves. It takes three tries to type her passcode in, as much due to shaking fingers as the concussion pressing heavy on her skull.

_Yeah, of course_ , the first text reads. And then: _I’ve always wanted more_.

Hours later, after Blake’s managed the slowest shower of her life, after she’s managed to order Chinese and eat a barely a third of it, after she’s tried and failed to read a book because the words blur together on the page from exhaustion and a concussion and her unexpectedly cathartic day, she falls asleep smiling.

* * *

She doesn’t text Yang the rest of the time she’s on bed rest. It’s too important to risk slipping into a conversation over text, too easy to talk to Yang and to lose the thread of her self-control, to get wrapped up in the way talking to Yang feels as natural as breathing, as running towards a fire, as jumping out of a plane and knowing that Yang and Ruby and Weiss are always going to be there on the ground waiting for her. She cleans her apartment at a glacial pace, the ache from her concussion fading each day but still slowing her down; she watches the entirety of _Avatar: The Last Airbender_ on Netflix because it’s easy to focus on; she throws away every piece of junk mail that’s accumulated in her sparsely decorated apartment over the last three months. 

She keeps busy to keep her hands from reaching for her phone, because she doesn’t want to rush this, to jump the gun, to step out ahead of herself and fall to pieces before she’s ever had a chance to explain to Yang how much she wants to keep seeing her, wants to see her every day even more than she already does, wants to fall asleep with her and wake up with her, keep coffee in her apartment just for Yang even though Blake only ever drinks tea. 

The last day of Yang’s shift creeps up, and Blake wakes up early. Concussion or no, she’s still woken up every day by six, because she always wakes up at six so she can go for a run with Weiss at 6:30; she was only able to go back to sleep on the first morning, and even then barely for an hour before her eyes refused to stay closed, no matter how exhausted she was.

It’s not too sunny outside, heavy rain clouds in the east tempering the brighter edges of the sunlight, and Blake takes her tea out onto the patio behind her apartment. Normally when she has off days, when she sits outside she can hear the inevitable clink of tools for Ruby and Yang’s patio a few doors down, the two of them in the process of rebuilding a decrepit motorcycle and working on it constantly when they aren’t on call. Instead, like it has been for the last two mornings, it’s quiet, the only sounds the rustle of the forest behind their building and the distant crunch of tires on gravel as someone drives through the parking lot out front. 

She tilts her head back against her chair and closes her eyes, hands curled around her tea habitually. Yang and Ruby will be off shift around noon, and home less than an hour later. Her knee bounces with nervous energy, Yang’s _I’ve always wanted more_ emblazoned on the back of her eyelids, and one side of her mouth tilts up into a smile towards the sky.

A knock sounds on her front door. Blake’s eyes fly open as she drags her chin back down, wincing and cursing at the aches still flashing through her skull, and nearly spills her tea. She looks at her phone stupidly to check the time-- it’s barely after seven-- but still scrambles back inside, because maybe the next shift showed up early, maybe Yang’s already here to talk, smiling in a doorway that’s barely wide enough to frame her broad shoulders, hair loose and tumbling like it always is when she’s at home, bright and warm and the only thing outside of redemption that Blake’s ever wanted. 

She stops dead in front of the door and pauses, breathes, drags a hand uselessly through her hair. Another knock sounds, and somewhere in the back of her mind she knows that Yang’s never impatient, never knocks more than once, but her heart still tilts in anticipation in her chest and she flings the door open.

“Hi there, Blake,” Adam says, and Blake stumbles back into the wall behind her. He towers over her like he always does, red hair glinting in the sunlight, and Blake presses herself into the wall because Adam is _here_ , Adam followed her after all this time, Adam is standing in her home with the same razor thin smile he always had after he silenced her with a slap or a shove. “Did you miss me?”

“What the hell are you doing here?” She keeps her voice as steady as she can, aims for the strength that helped her escape the first time and instead falls short, falls back into being a cowering sixteen year old girl too afraid to stop him as he sent sparks flying from SDC machinery, too cowardly to push back when he refused to come clean to the police. 

“That’s really all you have to say to me?” He raises an eyebrow and takes a step into the apartment, and then another, and another, until he’s standing where Weiss did three days ago as she told Blake she trusted her and encouraged her to pursue the relationship she wanted with Yang. Cold aches in her stomach because he looks larger than life in her apartment, like he always did, towering and intimidating. “You abandoned me after all the promises we made to each other, and then you’re not even happy to see me again?”

“Get out.” Blake straightens up, clenches her fists at her side, carefully doesn’t look towards the baseball bat she keeps propped near the front door, the same one she’s had since she could first afford one, as much a safeguard as a security blanket that’s traveled from PFD to helitack to smokejumping. She’s older now. She’s stronger now. She jumps out of planes and fights the fires that no one else is brave enough to fight. She can handle Adam. “I don’t have anything to say to you.”

“Oh, I think you have _plenty_ to say to me.” He stands with his hands on his hips, looking down his nose at her like he always did. “Like why you abandoned me. Like why you turned your back on everything we believed in.”

“We don’t believe in the same things,” Blake says, seething, anger winning out momentarily over fear. “You don’t believe in anything but hurting people because you can.”

“Don’t you want to know how I found you?” He ignores her, lifts one shoulder in a shrug, pulls a phone out of his pocket and shakes it at her. “Social media is amazing, you know. My lawyer, in his due diligence for the lawsuit the SDC filed against me, found out that Weiss _Schnee_ has an Instagram, like the spoiled consumerist princess she is, and lo and behold.” 

He unlocks his phone, flashes a picture at her. It’s too far away for her to see details but she knows what it is, knows because Weiss barely ever posts anything on Instagram. One is of her and Pyrrha, glamorous and bright, when Weiss had taken a long weekend between on-call shifts in July and flown out for Pyrrha’s birthday; one is of the four of them crammed together on the mechanical bull at the bar from two weeks ago, after making it home from a particularly harrowing four-day fire suppression, Ruby and Yang crammed onto the front half and Blake holding onto Yang’s shoulders for dear life, Weiss’s arms around her neck and face buried into her back as the bull started to move. 

“From there, it was easy.” Adam shrugs and pockets his phone again, stands tall with his sneer pressing against Blake’s anger, pushing her back into her fear, into the uncertainty that kept her chained to his side for so long. “I told my lawyer I needed you as a character witness, and he had your address within a week.”

“I’m not going to be your character witness,” Blake spits out. “Get out of my house.” 

“I just got here.” He smiles, wide and insidious, and drops down onto the couch, sprawling his long legs out across the floor. He takes up space, making it his own like he has with everything of hers, and Blake’s fingernails dig into her palms. “Don’t you want to catch up?”

“You stalked me across the country,” Blake says as levelly as she can manage. “Leave now and maybe I won’t call the cops on you.”

“But we have so much to talk about.” He pats the couch next to him. “Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”

“I don’t care,” Blake says. Her words shake more than she wants to admit, but she uncurls a fist and yanks her front door open. “Get the hell out of my house and stay away from me.” 

“Blake,” he says, low and dark, smile slipping off his face as he stands back up and halves the distance between him. Blake jerks back and is nearly blinded by a stab of pain in her head; she stumbles and still manages to get a grip on the bat and swing it up between them. It nearly collides with his ribcage and Adam stops in his tracks, familiar dangerous fury burning cold in his eyes. 

“Get.” Blake shifts into a more steady stance, holds the bat up more confidently. She can haul a two hundred pound man through a burning fire and swing a fire ax as hard as anyone she’s ever met, and the cool wood of the bat warms in her hands, steadies her, reminds her that she can do more damage to him than he can imagine with one swing. “Out.”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” he says with a scowl, the ugly fury that had driven her away rising to the surface. “I found you now and I’ll find you again. I’ll take every good thing you think you have before I’m done with you, because you _owe_ me, Blake.”

He steps forward, sneers when her hands tighten on the bat but she doesn’t swing. “You know I’m right,” he says. “You know I’m right because I’m just like you. We’re the same. We’ve always been the same.”

He steps backwards out the door, smile cold and calm, produces the phone from his pocket once more and unlocks it. Another familiar picture fills the screen, this time from Ruby’s Instagram, and Blake’s stomach contracts in on itself until she’s sure her lungs themselves have been crushed in the collapsing vacuum left behind because she knows this picture, has stared at it more than she ever wants to admit. She’s memorized the way Yang’s arm is slung around her shoulders on one side and Ruby’s on the other, Blake leaning against her after another jump a month ago, the both of them still streaked with sweat and ash but smiling nonetheless, Blake’s face tilted up towards Yang’s and adoration written plain into the tilt of her smile, longing and comfort matched perfectly in Yang’s smile down at her.

Her skin goes cold and for one inappropriate, useless moment, she wonders how she could have ever been so stupid as to think people didn’t know. Weiss knew. Ruby knew. And Adam, however far away he was, stalking through strangers’ Instagram accounts, knew. How could she have ever thought that it wasn’t telegraphed out for the entire world to see?

“We’re the same,” Adam says again. “I’m the only person who knows you. I’m the only person you can’t ruin.”

Blake’s hands ache around the bat, holding tighter than she has to anything since she woke up in the hospital four days ago, and she manages to wait until he strolls across the parking lot and drives off before she kicks the door shut and collapses against it, shaking hands dropping the bat so she can fumble into locking the door, before she collapses against it. Adam’s threats sit cold and furious in her chest, unshakeable and unwavering. 

Her heartbeat nearly stops when her phone buzzes, and she scrambles for it, somehow deathly certain that it’s Adam, somehow in possession of her phone number, ready to offer more danger and violence to the life she’s started to love here. Instead it’s the group text she has with her team, an innocent comment from Weiss about a video chat before she comes home, a response to Ruby’s insistence that she call all of them with Pyrrha so they can all meet her. The phone drops from her hands, clatters against the wood floors, and she pulls her knees up to her chest and buries her forehead in them until she can steady her breathing and her pulse, right herself and steady herself in the face of the looming threat of Adam. 

Her legs have cramped by the time she straightens them out, and her phone has more than a dozen notifications from the same group text. She scrolls through them numbly, taking in the way Weiss has tried to send a calendar invite and Ruby and Yang immediately dogpiled her for it. Her chest aches as she read through them, stares down at the family she’s found in Missoula, wonders what would happen if Adam could see how easily she speaks to them, how much she adores Ruby’s spark, how much she relies on Weiss’s determination, how much she loves Yang’s strength.

Her hands start to shake again as another text from Yang pops up, blunt and cheerful in its mockery of Weiss’s formality, and she thinks back to the picture of them Adam had focused on. The picture that irrevocably proved how she felt about Yang, even if no words had been properly spoken aloud about it yet. The proof that she’d unequivocally broken free of him and found someone better, someone extraordinary, and left the final lingering remnants of Adam in her past. The facet of her life he’d focused on specifically.

Blake scrubs at her face as if she’s been crying, even though her eyes and cheeks are dry, pulls in a long breath and holds it until the ache in her lungs outweighs the ache in her stomach and she can stand up again. She glances out the window towards the parking lot and sees no unfamiliar cars out there, but hefts the bat and takes it with her anyways. She sets her phone on the coffee table and strides into the bedroom, digs through her closet until she finds the duffel bag she’d traveled to Missoula with, the same one she’s had since Portland, and dumps it on the bed.

It doesn’t take long to pack. She spends half her time at the base and in uniform, and a sizable amount of her wardrobe is workout clothes. She shoves clothes into the bag as quickly as she can and dumps a toothbrush in as well, reducing her life to a jumbled mess of clothes and toiletries in a duffel bag. It’s more than she had the last time she ran, but the heft of it at her shoulder doesn’t help the cold ache in her chest as she crams her laptop and wallet into a backpack.

The last time she ran away, she had nothing but a handful of cash and her social security card, feet pounding along the pavement of an Oregon highway as she ran away from Adam and towards some sort of life she could feel proud of. This time, she has a bag full of clothes and a lease to break, a resignation to tender, too many promises to break. 

She pauses at the door, looks back to her phone full of texts from Yang, from her family, the possibility of a future where they could build something together. The phone vibrates again innocently on the tabletop, and it breaks her stupor. She strides out of the apartment with the duffel on one shoulder, the backpack on the other, a baseball bat clenched tight in her hand, and throws her life into her car and drives off before she can let herself look back.


	5. Chapter 5

> _buffer zone_ : use of 3D defensive actions to reduce potential for an ignition of fire gases in an immediate are of a structure occupied by firefighters

She drives south for four hours before she stops at a gas station, well into Idaho. It’s early afternoon, at least an hour past when Yang would have come home from her shift, an hour past the conversation they’d both decided to have, an hour past the promise she broke and the life she left behind. She fills her car with gas and drives for another hour until she hits a suburb north of Boise, and stops at a Starbucks. 

The barista at the counter doesn’t blink when she orders a tea and sets up her laptop at a table in the empty store. The wifi is shoddy at best, and it takes longer than it should have for her to email the department and cite a fake family emergency taking her out of state for an indeterminate amount of time, to pay two months of rent and tell her landlord that anything she left was theirs to do with as they pleased if she wasn’t back before then. 

She hasn’t touched her tea when she finishes, but it’s gone lukewarm anyways, and she dumps it in a trashcan and loads herself back into her car. Her head is aching, the concussion still pulling at the edges of her consciousness, and she slumps down and reclines the seat, waits for the foggy sleep she’s had since the hospital to take her.

It’s a fitful, frustrating rest, and an hour later she gives up and drives towards Boise again and stops at the first motel she sees. The room is musty, the comforter scratchy, but she shoves it away and collapses onto starchy sheets and curls into a ball. The baseball bat sits tilted against the bedside table and she’s propped a chair in front of the door. 

She sleeps, but less than she’d hoped, and dreams of falling without a parachute, of Yang’s hands on her skin, of Adam’s scowl and all the violence it promised. 

* * *

“Checking out?”

“Yes,” Blake says softly, hefting her bag higher onto her shoulder. One of the times she woke up from nightmares in the middle of the night, she’d unpacked and folded and repacked everything in the bag, until she could fit the backpack in as well. The baseball bat lays atop all of it, the handle just sticking out and easy to grab. 

She hands the keys to the clerk and turns to go, pausing only at the sight of a table near the door with a sign that claims that the paltry selection of pastries and burnt coffee is a continental breakfast. Her stomach aches, hunger a sharp counterpart to the rounded ache of failure and fear, because she hasn’t eaten since the night before Adam showed up. She glances back towards the clerk, who’s on his phone, and sighs, rolls her head on her shoulders, and wraps four of the pastries into napkins and fills two cups with coffee. 

She nearly spills the coffee all over herself on the walk back into the car, barely balancing everything in her hands. The duffel goes into the back seat, the baseball bat into the front, and she arranges the coffees in the cupholders as best she can without making a mess and then scarfs down the first of the stale pastries as she considers where to go.

Her helitack crew would take her back in a heartbeat, she’s sure of it. She was the best on her crew, preternaturally dependable and determined in a fire; she could walk onto a helitack base anywhere in the country and be back on one of their crews within a month. 

The second pastry has raisins, and she frowns down at it after her first bite. She hates raisins. The last time she’d been surprised by them had been when Ruby made cookies one weekend and had shoved one into Blake’s mouth the minute she walked through the door with Weiss after one of their runs. Blake had nearly gagged on the raisins in the oatmeal and Yang, on the other side of the apartment, had doubled over laughing, bright and shining and warm like always.

Blake sets the pastry aside gently, appetite gone once again. She can’t go back to helitack. Wildland firefighters are a small community. She can’t go back to anything that could lead Adam to Yang, to her team. 

“Fuck,” she mumbles out, rubbing at her eyes. She starts the car and pulls aimlessly out of the motel parking lot. She knows how to do one thing in life, and that’s fight fires, because it’s the only thing she’s ever known since she left Adam and the White Fang behind. City fire departments are independent, set apart from wildland units, wholly separate from the Forest Service and all of its subsidiaries. 

She swallows half of the coffee from one of the cups in one go, grimacing at the burnt taste, and heads towards Boise, and then northwest.

* * *

Portland hasn’t changed. The streets are the same, the buildings familiar, and each neighborhood she drives through is dotted with memories of her life here, house fires she fought and car accidents she responded to. She nearly stops when she turns the corner and drives by her old firehouse, still bustling with activity, the ladder truck out in the driveway for cleaning and hoses spread out along the garage floor for inspection, but she carries on past it. 

Ten minutes later, she parks at the curb of a familiar house and steps out, staring apprehensively up at the front porch and the mailbox next to the front door with a toy fire engine glued to the lid. Her feet don’t move, uncertainty rooting her boots to the concrete, and she stares up at the house for long minutes until a jeep pulls into the driveway.

“What-- Blake?” Sun nearly trips when he gets out of the car and sees her staring up the short driveway, regaining his feet and letting out a whoop as he tackles her up into a spinning hug. “What are you _doing_ here? Neptune is going to lose his shit, oh my God.”

Blake keeps the best hold she can on her composure, on the determination that kept her driving all the way from Missoula to Boise to Portland, but she breaks after less than a second and buries her face in his shoulder, lets him spin her around again.

“Neptune is going to flip, holy shit.” Sun sets her down but grabs for her shoulders, shaking her once and then twice and then hugging her again. “He’s been bitching ever since you left about no one taste testing his stupid kitchen concoctions-- hey, are you okay?”

His tone shifts immediately, concern calming the excited bounce in his step, and his hands go slack and then tighter at her shoulders. 

“What’s wrong?” he says after a long wait, and Blake shakes her head, bites down on the inside of her cheek, swears she’s not going to cry just because her friend is being _nice_ , but it doesn’t work. Her eyes burn and she shakes her head again, and suddenly Sun is hugging her again, calmer and gentler and smelling like the same terrible aftershave he’s always worn that stunk up the firehouse, and Blake’s fingers dig into his shirt and she pushes her face against the shoulder of his t-shirt and, for the first time since Adam came back into her life, cries.

* * *

It’s late when Blake wakes up on the futon in Sun’s living room. The blinds are drawn but there’s no sunlight filtering around them, and there’s the soft sound of voices in the kitchen. Blake rolls onto her side and pulls the blanket higher up over her shoulders-- it’s scratchy and wool, a gift to Neptune from the survivors of a kitchen fire their first year as a team-- and stares around the familiar room. It’s the same odd mix of college dorm and pretentious throw pillows that it’s always been, a distinct microcosm of the mix of Sun and Neptune. Her duffel bag is on the floor, wedged between the dramatically expensive leather couch and the nicked and scratched old coffee table, the handle of the baseball bat carefully within reach.

It’s their voices she can hear in the kitchen, low enough that she can’t make out what they’re saying, but not so low that she can’t hear the undercurrent of uncertainty in both of them. Blake rolls back onto her back and stares up at the ceiling instead, breathes in slowly to the sound of Neptune’s voice and breathes out to the sound of Sun’s. She slept on this couch more times than she could count years ago, back when it was brand new and Sun still hated it because it looked bougie, between apartment switches or after long shifts or too many drinks in their backyard. 

She wiggles further down into the couch and it grants her a small measure of release from the weighty knot that’s been sitting in her chest since she left Missoula. She can regroup here, find space to breathe and settle and figure out her next steps, and she closes her eyes again and wills herself to sleep again.

Five minutes pass and she gives up, standing from the couch and taking a moment to fold the blanket neatly and settle it back on the arm where Neptune always insisted on keeping it. Her back protests, two days straight of driving since she left Missoula leaving her muscles cramped and strained, and she swings her arms around habitually and regrets it immediately when her head aches. She’d nearly forgotten about her concussion. 

There’s a break in the sound of the boys talking in the kitchen, the sound of bare feet on the tile, and Blake rolls her eyes, lets out a sigh towards the ceiling.

“I can hear you,” she says after a moment. “Stop trying to be sneaky.”

“It’s not sneaking,” Neptune says indignantly, appearing from around the corner to the kitchen with a huff and his arms folded over his chest. Sun spills out after him, nearly tripping over Neptune’s feet, and Blake doesn’t protest when Neptune strides across the room to hug her. It’s less bombastic than Sun’s had been, tinged with worry, and Blake leans into it. “Sun’s being weird and mysterious, but it’s good to see you, you know.”

Blake doesn’t answer and just holds onto him tighter, breathing in shakily and peering over his shoulder to where Sun’s standing with his hands shoved in his pockets and shoulders hunched uncertainly. 

“Sun, come on,” Blake mumbles into Neptune’s shoulder, and Sun bounds over immediately, smile splitting his face as he collides with the both of them and holds on tight enough that Blake’s ribs ache and Neptune lets out an offended yelp.

“Let go, you heathen,” Neptune says with a groan, finally letting go of Blake long enough to reach back and drive an elbow into Sun’s ribs. “You’re crushing me.”

“You normally like that,” Sun says cheekily, slapping a loud kiss on Neptune’s cheek before stepping back and letting them go. Air rushes back into Blake’s lungs and she suddenly crushingly, violently misses Yang and her easy smiles and bright eyes, the way she held Blake tight and kept her steady even when they were so uncertain of what they were together. Yang who had always wanted more, who Blake had promised more and then disappeared on. 

“Hey,” Sun says, a hand landing on her shoulder hesitantly. “What’s wrong?”

Her hands curl into fists at her side and Blake shakes her head, presses her lips together, because she can’t say out loud why she’s here. She can’t put words to it, can’t admit that she’s running away, that she left Missoula to protect the people there she loves but was willing to come to them on her way. Denials and uncertainty ricochet in her chest and the swirling air from the ceiling fan scrapes against her skin.

Sun glances over at Neptune, who’s frozen in place, and Blake knows, somewhere in the back of her head that’s maintaining a tenuous grip on calm, that they’ve never seen her like this, never seen her waver, never seen the person she is underneath the determined front she put forward for everyone to see. It’s Sun who moves first, hands on her arms and moving her back down on one side of the couch and then taking a seat on the opposite side, hands clenching in his lap because Blake’s curling in on herself and can’t be touched right now, can’t be cared for like this, can’t be treated like someone blameless.

“It’s okay,” Neptune says, finally moving to stand behind Sun, a hand falling lazy and habitual on the back of Sun’s neck. Blake’s seen them in this exact posture more times than she can count, in this house and her older apartments and at the fire station, watching from the outside in as they started dating and then fell into an easy and comfortable rhythm and wondered what it must be like to be so comfortable around someone. “We don’t have to talk about it. You can stay here as long as you need.”

Blake pulls her knees up to her chest, holds tight and stares at the ripped denim of her jeans, and her mouth opens and then closes, again, and then a third time. 

“You hungry?” Sun says suddenly. “I’m going to order a pizza.”

“Sun,” Neptune hisses out, slapping the back of his head. “Not now--”

“It’s okay,” Blake manages to say. “I could eat.”

“See?” Sun slaps Neptune’s hand away and hops up to his feet. “It’s good you’re here, Blake, now we outnumber him and his shit taste in pizza. I haven’t had a pizza without pineapple on it in years.”

“My tastes aren’t shit, you philistine,” Neptune says with a huff. He shoves Sun out of the way and takes the seat he’d vacated, mirrors Blake’s posture. 

“Pineapple on pizza is a crime,” Blake says, because she can talk about this. This is familiar, an old argument with no stakes. 

“I can’t believe I missed you,” Neptune sniffs. “Traitor.” There’s no weight to the insult, and he follows it up by stretching one long leg out and shoving his socked toes against Blake’s shin comfortingly. 

“I ran away,” Blake blurts out suddenly, her last struggling grip on holding the story back shattering because in less than a year she’s grown to love Yang and Ruby and Weiss more than she ever loved Neptune and Sun but she’s still always loved them like brothers and she’s _tired_ , so tired, of holding it all on her own. 

Sun freezes, thumbs poised over his phone to order the pizza, and Neptune’s head tilts to one side. “What?”

“I ran away,” Blake says again. “Am running away. I don’t know. From everyone in Missoula.”

Sun pockets his phone and nudges the coffee table out with one foot until he can sit on it. “Why? It can’t be because of the job--”

“It’s not,” Blake says over him, and then snaps her mouth shut. She can still walk this back, can still rewrite this into something different, but there’s earnest blatant worry written into the way the both of them are looking at her and she’s so very tired of it all. 

She sighs and shifts, settles into a more comfortable position and folds her hands into her lap to keep them still. They both watch her, Sun fidgeting and Neptune punching his shoulder to stop him, as she stares down at her hands and keeps them in her periphery until she’s ready to speak.

“I used to know someone,” she starts, and then pauses. “His name was Adam.”

She breathes in carefully and winds her fingers together, pushes the whole of her hands down against her calves, and keeps talking.

* * *

The next day, Blake wakes up at six like always, tucked into the couch in their living room. Her head aches, less from her concussion and more from the fact that she’d been up until early in the morning, walking Sun and Neptune through her entire life story. She left nothing out, recounting everything from her childhood growing up in the White Fang communities to running away with Adam’s splinter cell, his aggression and the wildfire they caused, the way she ran away from him and never looked back until he showed up on her doorstep three days ago.

She’d waited, unable to breathe, for them to throw her out, to call the police, to be furious that she’d ever stepped foot in a firehouse after what she’d done. She’d waited and dug her fingernails into her palms and prepared herself for the worst, but then Sun had shrugged and Neptune had launched into a rambling soliloquy about her work to stop the fire mattering more than the fact that she wasn’t able to, and Blake’s body had sagged into the couch, more than decade’s worth of tension slipping out of her body and leaving nothing to hold her upright anymore. 

She’d told them about Adam, about Yang, about Weiss and Ruby and the home she’d built in Missoula. She’d told them about the baseball bat she kept in her home for as long as she could remember; the way she’d broken things off with every person she dated, always, because she was sure the moment she found happiness that her past would come calling; that she’d tried so hard to stop herself from giving in with Yang and had failed so miserably, tumbling ass over teakettle into imagining the rest of her life with Yang. 

She’d told them everything, and they had stayed. Neptune had made up the couch for her and Sun had gone on a late night run to the 24-hour dumpling place Blake always favored because they’d forgotten to actually order pizzas and had wrapped her up in a bear hug before she went to sleep. She’d told them everything, and they didn’t hate her.

Neptune’s moving around in the kitchen, steps lighter than Sun’s ever are but still not silent, and Blake peels herself off of the couch and shuffles in to where the coffeemaker is gurgling and Neptune’s mixing a protein shake at the sink. 

“Want to go for a run?” He doesn’t turn around when she slides into one of the chairs at the table, only tilting his head to one side to let her know he’d heard her. Before Missoula, before helitack, he’d been her primary running partner, and she’d put up with years of Sun complaining about her stealing his boyfriend away every morning to go run. 

“I wish,” Blake mumbles, and then yawns. “Doctor said I should wait.”

“Ah, yes.” He screws the cap onto the bottle with a flourish and turns sharply, points even more sharply at her. “The concussion. Bed rest and relaxation. Something I’m guessing was _not_ a priority the last few days.”

“You know, I could probably do a couple of miles.” Blake pushes halfway up to her feet, ignoring the way her head protests the movement. Neptune smiles charmingly at her and slams his blender bottle down onto the countertop, loud enough that Blake winces in spite of herself and slumps back down into her chair with a whine and cradles her head in her hands. “Rude.”

“You love me.” He puffs out his chest and then chugs half of the bottle in one go. “I told Sun I’d bring back donuts if you both behave and manage to not blow anything up while I’m gone.”

“I always behave,” Blake mutters. She sticks her tongue out at him for good measure, and he flips a middle finger her way and then swallows the rest of his shake. 

“We’re not on call til the weekend, so you have the rest of the week to prove me wrong,” he says with a wink. “Try to keep Sun from eating cookies for breakfast when he gets up, please.”

Blake waves a hand in his direction, not looking up until he pauses to squeeze at her shoulder on her the way out the door. She slumps further over the table, dropping her head onto her crossed arms and contemplating going back to bed, but exhaustion weighs her down. She wiggles one arm free and reaches for her pocket automatically, looking for her phone, only to freeze when she remembers she left it in Missoula. It was the right decision, severing the best way for her to reach out to Yang, but before she left she hadn’t had a morning in months where she didn’t wake up and automatically check the group text, the long-running text chain she had with Yang, the one she had with Ruby that had been nothing but traded gifs for weeks, the one with Weiss that was mostly book recommendations and complaining about Ruby’s seemingly endless energy. 

Her throat aches with how much she misses them, misses Yang, misses the way she was always the first one out of the plane when they jumped and the last one onto the transports on the way home, misses the way she kissed Blake slow and intentional and like what they had was something that mattered enough to do carefully and properly. 

Sun stumbles into the kitchen, yawning loudly and bumping into the doorjamb as he does. Blake pulls her head up enough to watch as he manages to grab a mug mostly-blindly and pour coffee into it, only spilling a few drops, and then dump enough sugar in it to decimate anything that could remain of the coffee’s bitterness. He shuffles over to the kitchen table and plops down with a groan, and Blake props her chin in her hand and stares at him, waiting for him to become a person after he’s had a sip of the coffee.

Sure enough, a minute and one burned mouth later, he’s functional and blinking over at her, his usual grin hitched into place. “Neptune already gone?”

“You just missed him,” Blake says. She raises an eyebrow when he nearly upends the whole mug into his lap trying to drink from it. “I always told him he needed to buy you sippy cups for coffee.”

“Har har,” Sun says with a huff. He mirrors her posture and leans his chin into his hand, wrinkling his nose as he stares at her and she stares right back. She’s won more staring contests with Sun than she could count, but that was before-- before she’d run away, before he knew who she was, before he knew what she’d done-- and she doesn’t win this time, clearing her throat and pulling back to look down at her hands on the tabletop. 

“What do you want to do now?” 

“Neptune said he’d bring back donuts,” Blake says, neatly sidestepping the question and pretending it’s not painfully obvious that she’s doing so. 

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know,” Blake says with a sigh. “I don’t know.”

Sun pulls his mouth to one side-- his thinking face, the one that makes Neptune grimace and Blake smile in spite of herself every time-- and taps a finger against his coffee cup. Blake waits for him to speak, waits for his boundless optimism to take over and tell her that she should go back to Missoula, to smokejumping, to everything and everyone she left behind. To Yang. Sun’s always been the most definitive example of optimism Blake’s ever seen, except maybe Ruby, and she waits for the inevitable cheerful scoff and insistence that she just needs to go back home and everything will be okay.

“You can stay here if you want,” he offers, and Blake raises an eyebrow at him. It wasn’t what she’d expected-- from Neptune, perhaps, plenty happy-go-lucky on his own but more tempered than Sun-- and she blinks at him slowly.

“What?” 

“You can stay--”

“No, I mean, I heard you,” Blake says. She wraps her arms around her stomach and pretends her knee isn’t bouncing rapidly under the table. “I just-- didn’t expect that.”

“Ha,” Sun says with a scoff. “You thought I’d just be like _oh everything is fine, go back to your superhot girlfriend and everything will be super great_ , didn’t you?”

“No,” Blake says immediately, lying terribly, and she sighs when he snorts coffee out of his nose laughing at her. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“I’m _mature_ now,” he says smugly, tilting his chin up haughtily; the effect is ruined by the fact that she just watched him snort coffee out of his nose wearing a t-shirt with a grumpy unicorn on it. 

“Absolutely.” Blake nods, hard enough that her head aches, but it’s more of a background ache than it had been a day earlier. “You certainly are.”

“Thank you,” Sun says, imperious and staid. He breaks immediately after it, dragging a hand through his hair and blowing air out through his lips. “Look, seriously. Obviously you can stay with us for as long as you need to. And if you want to come back to the PFD, I’m sure the captain can make that happen. But.”

Blake raises an eyebrow at him expectantly, waiting for him to finish. “But?”

“But,” he says, nose wrinkling on the _t_. “I don’t think you want to do that.”

“I don’t know what I want to do,” Blake says quietly, half to herself, because the only thing she knows is she wants to keep Adam away from Yang, away from Ruby and Weiss, away from the people she loves. 

“Yeah, obviously,” Sun says with a snort. “Luckily you have me here to tell you what you want to do, because you _suck_ at that and I’m great at it.”

Blake huffs out a sigh but waves a hand in his direction, because he’s right. She spent years spending almost every day with Sun and Neptune; they were her best friends and the closest to family she had before she fell headfirst into the dysfunctional, giddy, brilliant family that was her jump team. She’s slept in firehouses next to Sun and followed him into burning buildings, trusted him to have her back and carry her out when she was injured. Sun knows her as well as he knows Neptune.

It’s why she came here, after all. There’s something calming about being with people who’ve seen you at your previous worst and still loved you, even when you’re so much worse now.

“Okay,” she says. “What do I want to do?”

“You want to go home,” Sun says immediately. He flings one hand out, one finger lifted. “You _love_ wildland firefighting. I don’t know why, but you do. You wouldn’t shut up about it the whole time you were at PFD.” Another finger. “You’re a _smokejumper_ , Blake. The best of the best of the best. You’re too good not to do it.” A third. “You love your team. You only complain about people like _that_ when you love them, present company included.” 

He takes a moment to preen like a peacock and then throws up another finger, smile fading. “You’re in love with Yang. And you deserve to be happy with her.”

Blake sobers immediately, staring at the four fingers he’s holding up. She’s in love with Yang. She’s known it for days, for weeks, maybe since the first time she woke up in the middle of the afternoon in her bed with Yang wrapped around her side. She’s in love with Yang.

“I’m in love with her,” Blake says stupidly. 

“What, you didn’t know?” Sun rolls his eyes and slaps a hand against the table. “Please. It’s so obvious I could see it from space. _Neptune_ could see it from space and he spent two years telling himself he was straight so he didn’t have to deal with being totally into all this.” He gestures at himself incredulously. “You’re _so_ stupid in love with her.”

“Oh,” Blake says, staring at him. “Right.” 

She pushes her chair back and stands abruptly, wiping her palms on her sweatpants and staring aimlessly around the kitchen. Her muscles burn with unused energy and she paces over to the living room and then back, shoves her hands into her pockets and then pushes at her hair uselessly. Sun twists around in his chair until he can prop his chin on the back of it, watching her with a grin.

“You done processing yet, or should I text Neptune and tell him to run a few more miles before he comes home?”

“I hate you,” Blake mutters. She doesn’t hate him. She knows she doesn’t and he knows she doesn’t, but it feels good to focus on that instead of the fact that she’s in love with Yang and she left her. 

“No you don’t.”

“No I don’t!” Blake yells out. “Fuck. Fuck!”

The front door opens and Neptune appears with donuts, standing stock still because Blake’s standing in their living room cursing at their ceiling.

“Oh, good, are we at that part of the realizations, then?” 

“I hate you,” Blake informs him.

“No you don’t,” Sun and Neptune say in concert, and Blake glares at both of them and yanks the box of donuts out of Neptune’s hands. 

“I have to go back.” She says it to the donuts, and shoves a crueller into her mouth.

Neptune reappears from the kitchen with a cup of coffee of his own and settles on the couch. “You got there a lot faster than I expected,” he says mildly.

Blake glares at him and snatches the box of donuts out of his reach in retaliation, and he sighs and leans back into the couch, one arm folded back behind his head. Sun plops down next to him, nearly upended both of their coffees, and sprawls out with his legs across Neptune’s lap. 

“So you’re going back?” He slurps at his coffee and blindly dodges the elbow Neptune throws at him, because Neptune hates it when he slurps and Sun does it constantly just to annoy him. It’s comforting to witness, calming and homey, and Blake takes another bite of the crueller. 

“Yes?” Blake says, and then pauses. “No? I don’t know. I don’t know how to--with Adam--”

“File a restraining order?” Neptune offers. 

Sun points at him and then sits up until he can slap a kiss against his cheek. “He’s so smart,” he says fondly, dragging a hand through Neptune’s blue hair until it’s sticking up in more directions than should be humanly possible. 

“Would that work?” Blake mumbles into her donut. She knows the answer-- that it’s the best step she can take right now, that it will buy her time until she knows how to keep Adam away from her for good-- but she still stares down at the crueller as if it has the answer until Neptune speaks up.

“I mean, it seems like a good start, right?” He shrugs and then pauses to shove Sun away dramatically. “Restraining order, and you tell your people there what’s what, and now everyone in your life knows to be on the lookout for him.”

“Yeah,” Blake says absently. “I--yeah. That’s a good idea.”

“I’m _very_ smart,” Neptune says, flashing his model-perfect smile at her, and Blake refuses to agree but offers him a donut as a half measure.

“I don’t know how to tell them,” Blake rushes out. “I-- the way I left was bad. I don’t know how to--”

“You gotta be honest,” Sun says with a shrug. “I’m sure they’re upset, but you had your reasons. They’ll get it.”

“How do you know?” Her voice is smaller than she wants to acknowledge, wavering and uncertain and everything she’s tried so hard for so long not to be. 

“Because you’re a team,” Neptune says simply. He hands the uneaten half of his donut to Sun and lets his hand fall onto Sun’s shins, rubbing absently over his sweatpants. “Because you were trying to protect them, and because you’re going back so you can all protect each other as a team. They’re firefighters. They’ll get that.”

Blake picks at the last remnants of the crueller in her hand, throat aching and head pounding because she wants to cry but she’s so tired of crying, of running, of hurting. They’re right, she knows that they’re right. She has to go home, has to explain herself, has to set herself in front of Yang, mistakes and all, and hope that she’ll take her back.

“Fuck,” Blake mumbles, dropping the crueller back into the donut box. “I have to go back.”

“We’re well past settling that part, darlin,” Sun drawls out. 

“Asshole,” Blake says with a huff, but she hands him the box of donuts anyways and drops down to sit on the coffee table in front of them and leans her face into her hands. “What do I-- how do I tell them?”

“The same way you told us.” Sun shrugs, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Then again, maybe it is. She shakes her head in her hands and pulls in a deep breath. 

“Okay.” She sits up straighter and scrubs her hands against her pants. “I should go.”

“Whoa there,” Neptune hurries out. “I’m pretty sure there is _no_ way in hell you should be driving with that concussion.”

“I’m fine--”

“Absolutely not,” Neptune says firmly. He slaps at Sun’s legs until he moves them and stands up, towering over Blake like he always has. “You need to at least rest for another day or two before that, and no offense but you _desperately_ need a shower. You’re gross.”

“You’re gross,” Blake mutters, even as she glances down at her t-shirt-- the same one she’d been wearing when she got here, stale with the stench of two days in a car-- and frowns at it. “Okay, fine.”

“Excellent,” Sun says with a cheer as he leaps up to his feet and drags Blake up with him. “And since you’re going to be here for a few days, I think now’s a _great_ time for me to--”

“No,” Blake says flatly, even as she’s carted over towards the stairs. 

“--finally teach you how to play Fortnite,” he carries on without missing a beat, sweeping her duffel bag up in his free hand. He deposits her at the foot of the stairs and shoves her bag into her hands. “But first, shower. You’re stanky.”

“I hate you,” Blake says, but there’s even less bite to it than earlier. She’s never hated him, never hated either of them, and her chest aches at how much she’s missed them. It hurts almost as much as how she already misses Yang, misses Weiss and Ruby.

She lets herself be shoved up the stairs towards the bathroom, listening as Sun and Neptune bicker about video games, and steps into the first real shower she’s had in days and lets the hot water beat against her sore muscles. There’s still fear, unfettered and cruel, coiled in her chest, but there’s also certainty, and determination, the same stubborn will that carried her through escaping Adam the first time, and the fire academy, all the way to starting her smokejumper career.

She’s going to go home.


	6. Chapter 6

> _radiant extension_ : fire that has transferred ignition heat to adjacent materials across space

She spends three days in Portland. Anxiety gnaws at her constantly, through Sun’s elated and useless explanation of Fortnite and dinners with the both of them, sleeping in late and napping frequently as her body mends itself. She almost opens up her computer to email Yang ten times a day, but stops every time, hands hovering over the keyboard until the ache in her stomach stops her and she puts the computer away. By the time she leaves, her head hurts less but there’s a constant weight in her chest. It settles heavy behind her sternum as she hugs the both of them and gets into her car and drives towards Montana, growing with every mile closer to home she gets. 

She drags her heels through the drive home, driving for shorter days and taking more breaks, filling a new phone with pictures at scenic overlooks to fill her time and allow her to procrastinate. She’ll make it home to face the people she left behind, but she can take her time; a small concession to her own worry that Neptune and Sun insisted was allowable. 

It’s midmorning when she finally crosses into the Missoula city limits, and instead of home she drives to the police station. It takes longer than she’d imagined to file a restraining order, and by the time she’s done the sun is high in the sky and she’s exhausted from the number of questions the detectives asked her, but she has a copy of the order in hand and a confirmation that a process server will get it to Adam as soon as possible.

Fatigue drags at her shoulders as she settles back into her car and drops her head back against the seat. Her keys are heavy in her hand as she starts the car, and she drives well below the speed limit the whole way home. It’s not until she’s turning into the familiar parking lot that nerves overcome exhaustion, and her left leg bounces rapidly under the steering wheel.

Yang’s truck is in the parking lot. So is Ruby’s car, and Weiss’s. They’re all home. 

Blake pulls her car into a parking slot far from any of theirs and sits silently with the engine off, willing herself to get out and go knock on Yang’s door, to explain herself, to do _anything_ besides sit in her car doing nothing.

A door opens, creaking familiarly, and Blake’s eyes jerk to one side and her pulse stumbles because that’s Weiss’s door opening. That’s Weiss, arms wrapped around herself and talking softly to Yang, who’s slumped against the doorjamb. 

Yang looks tired. They both do: there’s a crease to Weiss’s frown that Blake’s never seen, a slump to Yang’s spine that undercuts everything Blake’s ever known of her. Nausea twists in her stomach because she did this. She did this.

She doesn’t move until Weiss’s door shuts, after Weiss has hugged Yang and sent her shuffling back towards her own apartment, and Blake closes her eyes, breathes in deep, and lunges out of the car before she can talk herself out of it.

“Yang.” It cracks in the middle and she jerks to a stop, boots scuffing on the asphalt and shoulders tight as she holds herself back. Her body wants to be closer, to feel Yang’s skin under her hands and lips against hers, but Yang’s flinched back at the sound of her voice. Yang’s never flinched away from her, and Blake presses a hand over her mouth.

“Yang,” she says again. “I--”

“You’re here,” Yang says over her, too loud in the quiet of the evening. 

“I am,” Blake says, for lack of anything better to say. “I-- I’m so sorry.”

Yang shoves her hands into her pockets and rocks back on her heels, nostrils flaring and jaw clenching, and Blake cuts herself off and pauses, breathes, waits. She only has one chance to make this right. 

“Sorry for what?” Yang says flatly. 

“For leaving,” Blake says in a rush, and then bites down on her lip when Yang flinches again. “And for the way I left.”

“You _left_ ,” Yang says, voice cracking into the cooling air, and Blake’s fingernails dig into her palms. The ache in her knuckles and her palms keeps her grounded, keeps her from running back to her car and back to Portland. 

“I shouldn’t have,” Blake says carefully. She knows how to explain this, has turned it over in her head for days, the whole time she was driving home. “Something happened and I got scared and I ran away.”

“Something happened,” Yang repeats. A frown stretches across her face, pulling at her eyes and making her look so much older than she is. “You texted me that you wanted something more and then I come home and you _left_.”

“I-- that’s not why I left,” Blake says, cursing her own stupidity, the fact that she’s been so wrapped up in worrying about explaining Adam that she forgot how she’d been ready to move things forward with Yang, had left her with a promise for more and an abandoned apartment. “Something else happened and I was scared, I was worried you would get hurt, so I--”

“You were worried I would get hurt.” Yang laughs, dry and humorless, and drags a hand through her hair. “Seriously?”

“Yang, please.” Blake nearly reaches for her, nearly ruins it all because it’s been so long since Yang was within her reach and her body keeps bending towards her like gravity demands it. “I know I hurt you and I’m sorry, I promise, but can I please just-- can I explain what happened and if you want I’ll go away.”

It’s not a promise she’d expected to make, but it falls from her lips regardless and she finds herself sure that she means it. She can’t be here if Yang doesn’t want her. She can’t stay in this city if Yang doesn’t want her nearby. She’ll pack up her life and transfer to another base and never come back to Missoula if that’s what Yang wants, because if Yang doesn’t want her then Blake will have to accept that she ruined the best thing that ever happened to her and make her way somewhere else.

“I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you want,” she carries on anyways. “But can I please just explain first, before you decide.”

Yang stares at her, jaw working silently and a different kind of heat burning in her eyes, dark and smoldering and angry, and Blake holds her breath and waits.

“Fine,” Yang says eventually. She tilts her head towards Blake’s apartment, the one splitting the distance between Weiss’s place and Ruby and Yang’s. “Or did you give your keys back already?”

“Not yet, no,” Blake says in a rush. She digs her keys out and holds them up in front of her, for lack of anything better to do, and waits again until Yang nods before she moves. 

Her apartment smells stale but familiar even with most of her possessions packed into her car, and Blake flips the lights on. Yang shuts the door behind her and stands stiffly by it, one hand flexing near the doorknob, and Blake stands by the couch where Adam had stood to threaten her, where Weiss had stood and told Blake that she should be honest about how she feels. Her phone is still sitting on the table. Blake pulls in a deep breath, pushes at her eyes, and then speaks.

“I used to date someone,” she says slowly. “His name was Adam.”

She pulls her hands away from her eyes, waits for the starbursts behind her eyelids to fade, and focuses on a point past Yang’s shoulder before she carries on.

“I was young and we were wrapped up in a lot of shady things.” She pulls at her fingers on one hand, twisting them around the other until her knuckles ache, because Yang is still standing tall and impassive by her front door. “He wasn’t a good person, and it took me too long to understand. He was violent and cruel and spiteful, and I ran away from him when I was seventeen, hitchhiked to Portland, and rebuilt my life from there.”

Yang’s jaw unclenches, her mouth softening immeasurably. “Blake,” she says, achingly uncertain, and Blake shrinks back because she has to finish this. She has to say it all at once or it won’t be enough, she’s sure of it, and she shakes her head and twists her hands tighter around one another.

“He followed me here,” she hurries out. “He tracked me down and showed up at my door and threatened everything I cared about, every _one_ I cared about. And I panicked, and I ran away, because that way at least if he found me again it would just be _me_. And not you, or Ruby or Weiss.”

“Blake,” Yang says again. Her hands unclench and her eyes are bright and watering. Blake’s never seen her cry, and she stares in momentary wonder at the way her eyes seem impossibly brighter than ever. “Why would you-- why didn’t you just _tell_ me--”

“Because I did terrible things with him,” Blake says, and now she’s crying, silent but unavoidable, and she swipes angrily at her eyes with an unsteady hand. “I grew up in the White Fang.”

Yang stops abruptly, hands unclenched now and hanging at her sides, halfway to reaching out to Blake.

“My parents founded it, back when it was just an environmentalist group.” Blake shakes her head and sniffs, wipes at her eyes again. “I grew up there. With Adam. He split off into another group when I was twelve. He said the White Fang was too passive and needed to do more, and I followed him, and he started doing terrible things and I was there with him.”

“What does that mean?” Yang says carefully. She wipes at her own eyes, even though she hasn’t actually cried, and Blake’s stomach twists around itself at the sight of it.

“Vandalism, mostly.” She shakes her head again and breathes in deep, exhales slowly. “Of construction sites and logging companies and pipeline developers. It was always against big companies, so I was sure it was fine.” 

She pushes her shaking hands into her pockets and inhales deeply, doing her best to steady herself. “When I was seventeen we went after a warehouse. It was supposed to just be graffiti, some broken windows, but Adam wanted to do more. He wanted to smash up a lot of the machinery they had parked there, keep them from starting to build.

“I told him we shouldn’t,” Blake says, as if that matters now, and she blows air out past her lips in a watery, humorless laugh. “But he just kept going at it. He had a sledgehammer and-- and I was scared, I was scared of him, so I just followed along.”

“Did he hurt someone?” Yang says thinly. “Did you--”

“No one was there,” Blake says in a rush. “But it was so dry, and I tried to stop all the sparks, but the next day on the news we saw that the whole area had caught fire overnight.”

“Wait,” Yang says over her. Tension snaps into her shoulders as the pieces come together behind her eyes, and Blake digs her fingernails into her palms. “This-- you’re talking about the SDC fire.”

“Yes,” Blake says softly. “That one.”

Yang’s eyes go wide and then narrow abruptly, her jaw clenching visibly. Blake’s sure she can hear the way Yang’s teeth are grinding against one another, positive that she can see every piece of information she’s just given Yang spinning into place with each other as she catalogs the worst of Blake’s sins.

“Please say something,” Blake says quietly. Yang doesn’t move, still standing frozen on the other side of the room. Her fists clench at her sides, the muscles in her jaw working visibly. 

“That’s the worst wildfire in recorded history,” Yang says slowly. “You started it.”

It hits like a thunderclap, like a crowning forest fire, like a bullet, and Blake nearly collapses under the weight of it. 

“It was just supposed to be graffiti,” she says again, weak and meaningless. “But then he wanted to do more damage-- there were sparks and I was _sure_ I got them all, that there wasn’t any risk. But--”

“But then three entire cities were burned to the ground,” Yang says, thin and sharp. “You--”

“I left,” Blake rushes out. She pushes the heels of her palms into her eyes, breathes in shakily. “When I realized what had happened and I tried to tell Adam we should come forward, he-- it didn’t work. So I ran away, and I became a firefighter. I thought maybe I could make up for-- not make up for, I know I can’t make up for it, but I wanted to _try_.”

Yang is still quiet, staring blankly at her from the other side of the room, and Blake’s head aches with the lingering edges of her concussion, her throat burning at the fact that she’s spoken out loud about her worst failure for the second time in her life. The stakes are so much higher now than they were with Sun and Neptune, their understanding a gift from a life she left behind years ago; Yang is something different, something more, something Blake needs in a way she hasn’t ever needed anything besides a purpose to fight for. 

“Please say something,” Blake says again, desperate, pleading. “I know it’s so much, but it was an accident, I _swear_ \--”

“I know,” Yang says over her, her voice tight. “I know. Obviously you weren’t-- you didn’t intend to hurt anyone. I know you. I know that’s true.”

Blake slumps back against the wall behind her, hands pressed over her mouth and legs weak with something like relief. 

“I just-- why didn’t you _say_ anything?” Yang shoves her hands into her pockets. “We’re a team, all of us. We trust you with our lives but you ran out on us because you’ve been sitting on something like this that clearly makes it hard for you to do your job because you think it’s some kind of _penance_. We’re a team and-- you and me, we’re-- _fuck_ , Blake.”

“I know,” Blake whispers. “I know. I don’t expect you to--”

“You walked out.” Yang’s voice shakes. “You walked out on us. On me.”

“I thought it was better,” Blake says weakly. “I thought it would be better if I just wasn’t here.”

“How could you--” Yang exhales loudly through her nose. “You think that little of me? Of Ruby and Weiss? That we’d just carry on like nothing happened after you bailed on us? Just grab up some random person to fill your shoes?”

“I know,” Blake whispers. “I’m sorry.”

“Fuck,” Yang says, too loud for the room, and Blake winces but holds still as best she can, steeling herself for anger and fury and all of the fire that makes up Yang Xiao Long to come pouring out at her. 

“I shouldn’t have left,” Blake says as steadily as she can. “I’m so sorry that I left.”

“God,” Yang says, exhaling loudly and shakily, and she covers the distance between them in one long stride and pulls Blake to her, buries her face into Blake’s hair and holds her so tight that her ribs ache. 

Blake freezes for a split second but then flings her arms around Yang, pushes her face into familiar masses of blonde hair and lets out a cracking, aching sob. Her fingers dig into Yang’s back, familiar muscles flexing under her hands. It’s only been a week, barely, since she last touched Yang, but she pushes closer and holds onto her tighter, unable to let go until the world steadies under her feet. There’s still more uncertainty than ever-- Adam is still out there, surely not to be thwarted by a restraining order; there’s no telling if Ruby and Weiss will be as forgiving as Yang; the future of Blake’s career is hanging in the balance after so unceremoniously disappearing-- but here, now, at this precise point in time when Blake is wrapped up in Yang and holding on tight, Blake is sure she’s exactly where she’s supposed to be.

“You can’t do that again.” Yang’s words land hot against the skin of her neck, and Blake shudders and sniffs and nods furiously into Yang’s shoulder. “You have to promise you won’t leave again.”

“I promise,” Blake mumbles into Yang’s shoulder. Surely her fingernails have broken through the cotton of Yang’s t-shirt for how hard she’s holding on, have broken through skin, but Yang doesn’t even flinch except for her own shaking exhales, her arms unwavering around Blake.

Yang pulls back until she can lean her forehead against Blake’s, eyes squeezed shut and hands curling into Blake’s hair, and Blake stops breathing because surely all of the fury in Yang’s muscles, the heat in her eyes, has sucked the oxygen out of the room. 

“You gotta talk to Weiss.”

It’s not what Blake expects, and the floor tilts and then rights sharply under her feet. “What?”

“Whatever you told her before she went to New York.” Yang pulls in a slow breath and then pulls back, stands up straighter, holds Blake at arm’s length with hands still tangled into her hair. “She thinks it’s why you left.”

“Oh,” Blake says stupidly. “Shit.”

“She’ll listen.” Yang smiles, slow and simmering, and heat coils low in Blake’s belly because she’s _missed_ this, missed Yang, missed the way it feels to have Yang’s hands on her body and voice in her ear. “She just needs to be mad first.”

“Oh, boy,” Blake mutters. She tilts her head without meaning to when Yang’s thumb swipes across her cheekbone, dragging a shiver down her spine. The last time she’d touched Yang, really touched her, there’d been no concussion swimming in the back of her skull and Yang had swallowed up the sound of every ragged exhale and whine as she pushed Blake harder into the workbench in the gear room, fingers working inside her until Blake’s head had dropped back and her voice had ricocheted off every cluttered corner of the gear room.

Her hands tighten against Yang’s hips without meaning to, habit sending her fingers skidding under the hem of Yang’s t-shirt and along the sharp lines of muscles that make up her back, her waist, her stomach. Yang’s eyes slide shut and Blake leans closer before she can tell herself it’s too soon, that she has trust to rebuild before she can do this, but it’s been an eternity since she could feel Yang’s skin under her hands and under her lips, and she tilts closer like gravity demands it.

“Wait,” Yang says, shaking and uncertain, and Blake jerks back so quickly she nearly loses her balance, pulling her hands away rocking back on her heels. She’s only kept upright by Yang’s hold on her, hands solid anchors refusing to let Blake move out of her immediate proximity. “I just-- need some time.”

“Oh,” Blake says, because she doesn’t know what else to say. “I’m sorry, I--”

“We’re okay,” Yang says firmly. Her thumb strokes along Blake’s cheekbone again, drawing a shudder from Blake’s spine all the way down to her toes. “It’s not the same, but we’re _okay_. I just need to sort through all of it first.”

She reels Blake back in and tilts at Blake’s jaw until she’s looking up, and Blake’s powerless to stop her when Yang presses a kiss to the corner of her mouth. Something that sounds suspiciously, pathetically like a whimper slips out past Blake’s lips, and Yang’s laugh brushes against the line of her jaw before Yang straightens back up.

“We’re okay,” Yang says again. “Okay?”

“Yeah,” Blake breathes out. She stares dumbfounded up at Yang-- Yang who’s forgiven her, Yang who let Blake back into her life, Yang who barreled into Blake’s life and set herself up as a fixed point where previously there had been nothing but guilt and fear to guide her forward-- and bites down at the inside of her cheek to stop from blurting out exactly how much she wants to kiss her right now. 

_Are you sure_ , she wants to say. _I love you,_ she wants to say. _I’m scared I’ll ruin you_ , she wants to say. It ricochets in her chest, rattling against her unsteady heartbeat, fear and want and violent pulsing need coalescing together into everything she could say to Yang right now, all the ways she could make or break a future for them.

“Okay,” is all she manages to say instead. She closes her eyes and breathes in, shaking and uncertain, when Yang’s palm presses against her cheek and thumb brushes over her mouth. Blake leans into it, pushes more of herself into Yang’s hand, as much as she can. “Okay.”

* * *

After, it’s a whirlwind of reconstruction. Blake has to inform her landlord that she isn’t, actually, moving out; prostrate herself in front of the base captain and hope she’ll be let back onto her jump team; sit down with Ruby, circumspect but ultimately forgiving, and explain why she left; sit down with _Weiss_ , full of anger and distrust, and explain that Blake didn’t leave because of her anymore than she left because of Yang.

There had been a moment, a long excruciating moment, where Weiss had stood in Blake’s living room impassively, arms crossed and chin lifted high as she listened silently while Blake explained everything, from the day she decided to leave Adam to the day she left Missoula, when Blake had been certain Weiss wouldn’t forgive her.

But then, finally, just as Blake was about to crumble under the weight of uncertainty, Weiss had spoken and Blake’s world had finally righted itself the rest of the way.

“I get that being moody and angsty is your thing or whatever,” Weiss said coolly. She’d moved to set her hands on her hips, only to be stopped by the cast on her wrist, and scowled down at it with such fury that a burst of affection warmed in Blake’s chest. “But next time try _talking_ to us, will you? Jesus, Blake.”

By the time Blake shuts her apartment door after shuffling back from Yang and Ruby’s apartment, where the four of them had eaten dinner and Blake had gotten mildly wasted on just one glass of the whiskey Weiss brought, it’s well past midnight and her head is pleasantly fuzzy, for the first time in days only because of alcohol instead of a concussion or fear. 

Her sheets smell as stale as the rest of the apartment, but she’s too tired to change them. She manages a cursory shower and musters enough energy to dig a pair of sweats and a t-shirt out of her still-packed duffel before she flops down onto the bed with a sigh. She’ll get an answer tomorrow as to if she can stay on the jump team, but her chances are good. The rest of the team isn’t on call for the rest of the week. She has time, now, to rebuild the trust they had in her before they go on a call again together.

She’s almost asleep when a knock on her door yanks her into wakefulness. She sits up so quickly the whole room blurs, one hand groping over the side of the bed for the baseball bat she’d propped there carefully before going to bed.

Another knock sounds, and Blake’s head clears sharply. Bat in hand, she walks softly out of her bedroom, towards the front door. She pushes up onto her toes, bracing her hand against the door carefully, and peers out through the peephole.

Yang’s standing at her door. Tension leaks out of Blake and she slumps against the door, her grip on the bat loosening until the tip thunks against the floor. She breathes in deep and holds the air in her lungs until her heartbeat stabilizes, lets it out as she undoes the chain on the door and opens it.

“Hey,” Yang says, almost shyly. Her hands are fisting in her pockets, her shoulders nervous, teeth flashing in the dark as she bites at the corner of her lip.

“Hey,” Blake says slowly. The thrill of fear that had propelled her out of bed has vanished, taking her energy with it, and she’s desperately, outlandishly tired, but Yang is standing in her door shifting her weight from one foot to the next, and everything Blake’s done in the last week has been to bring her back to Yang. “Are you okay?”

Yang glances down at the baseball bat still hanging from Blake’s hand, and her forehead creases. “Should I be asking you that?”

Blake looks down at the bat as well, blinking slowly. “I-- just a precaution,” she says lamely. She tilts the bat against the wall beside the door and steps back, angles her body to give room for Yang to step inside if she’d like. “Do you want to come in?”

There’s an awkwardness between them, tilting and unsteady, that was never there before. They were friends, and then partners, and then something more than that but less than either of them wanted, but even at their must unsteady they were never _awkward_.

Until, at least, Blake ran and left Yang behind. Blake wraps her arms around her stomach and watches as Yang doesn’t move, feet steadfast on the concrete outside her door even as her shoulders tilt forward.

“I-- never mind,” Yang says. Her jaw clenches and she pulls back, stands up straighter, clenches her fists hard enough that it’s visible even with them in her pockets. “I should go--”

“Yang,” Blake blurts out, as much to cut Yang off as because she’s three feet away from Yang and can’t stop herself. Yang’s name feels like home, and the way she freezes, half uncertain and half hopeful, at Blake’s voice warms deep in Blake’s chest. “Do you want to--”

“Yes,” Yang says hurriedly.

“--stay here tonight,” Blake finishes after a moment. Yang’s wide eyes burn into hers, and Blake nearly drops the bat completely. Yang clears her throat and scuffs one shoe against the concrete, stirring something heavy deep in Blake’s stomach. She tilts her head towards the interior of the apartment, not trusting herself to speak at the moment, and holds her breath as Yang slides past her in the narrow entryway and toes out of her shoes. 

Blake busies her hands with locking the door, moving carefully and deliberately lest she lose her grip on self-control and launch herself at Yang. Yang stands uncertainly in the living room, hands finally out of her pockets but still in fists at her sides, flexing and releasing slowly. 

“Should we--um--” Blake gestures uselessly towards her bedroom door, hanging open where she’d left it, and the edge of her bed that’s visible from the living room. 

“Right,” Yang says, too loudly, and she winces, shrinks down into herself for a moment, and Blake, suddenly, steadies. Yang is just as uncertain as she is, but Yang is still here, just like Blake is here now, and the ache of anxiety in Blake’s stomach eases. 

“You know the way,” she says, soft and lilting, familiar, easy, and Yang smiles at her. It warms the whole room and settles on Blake’s skin, the way Yang smiles, and Blake breathes slowly through the way her hands itch to grab for Yang, the way she wants to push into the closest flat surface and kiss her until neither of them can breathe. 

Instead, she casts another look towards the door to ensure that it’s locked and then tilts her head towards the bedroom again. Yang’s smile softens around the edges, smaller but no less warm, and she shuffles into the bedroom, shucking her sweatshirt as she goes. 

This isn’t the first time they’ve been in Blake’s bed together, but it’s the first time that doesn’t involve sex. Yang sits uncertainly on one edge, plucking at the hem of the rumpled blankets and watching as Blake closes the door and settles the bat in its spot by her bedside table once more. Blake clears her throat and settles carefully on the bed, pulling the blanket up to her waist and sitting up ramrod straight.

“This shouldn’t be this difficult,” Yang mumbles, and a surge of affection, of comfort, of love, swells in Blake’s throat, and she laughs without realizing it and turns off the last of the lights. 

“Yeah,” she mumbles. She shuffles down more comfortably onto the bed, turning on her side towards Yang and watching as she does the same. With all the windows open and the sun long since set, the apartment is cool, and a shiver that’s only half due to the temperature works its way down Blake’s spine. Yang grins from her spot on the other side of the bed, six inches and a whole ocean of space between them, and drags the blanket higher until it covers their shoulders. 

“Hey,” Yang says, barely above a whisper. It’s thunderous in the quiet of the dark and she’s close enough that Blake can feel her breath, warm and smelling of toothpaste, against her lips. 

“Hi,” Blake whispers back. _I love you_ burns in her throat, but she just smiles when Yang shuffles a bit closer. Blake reaches out, knuckles dragging along Yang’s arm over the blankets, following familiar lines of muscle up past her elbow and along her bicep until she hits the bottom edges of Yang’s tattoo and follows from there. She watches her hand as she moves, a steadier anchor than the way Yang’s watching her with dark eyes and teeth digging into her bottom lip.

“I missed you,” Yang says after Blake’s traced the flowering patterns up to her shoulder. 

Blake pauses, fingers curling along the cap of Yang’s shoulder, lost momentarily in relearning the way Yang’s skin feels under her hand after being sure she’d never get the chance to touch her again.

“I missed you, too,” Blake says. She abandons the tattoo and follows the line of Yang’s shoulder, fingertips tripping along the deltoid and over the trapezius, reveling in the way Yang’s breath wavers and her pulse flutters in her throat when Blake’s hand slides along it. She makes it to Yang’s jaw, fingers curling along her cheek, and Yang finally moves, hand curling around Blake’s wrist and holding her in place. 

Blake pauses, fingers pulling back until she’s not touching Yang anymore, an apology already building in her chest, only to be cut off when Yang turns and presses a kiss to her palm.

“I missed you,” Yang says again, less a whisper and more a definitive statement, solid and sturdy and unwavering, and Blake burns under the weight of it. Yang kisses her hand again and then turns, rolling onto her other side and pulling at Blake’s wrist until she follows, settling in behind her with a faceful of hair.

“You have too much hair,” Blake mumbles.

“Rude,” Yang says, voice thick with exhaustion, even as she lets go of Blake’s wrist long enough to drag her hair over her shoulder. Blake pushes closer and tilts her forehead against Yang’s back, pressing a kiss between her shoulder blades. “You love my hair.”

 _I love you_ nearly bounds out of her mouth. Blake pushes her face into Yang’s back again, eyes burning and throat aching with the effort of staying quiet, and she doesn’t risk the uncertainty of her own voice and just nods instead, enough that Yang can surely feel it against her spine. Yang’s arm settles along hers, holding Blake’s hand in place over her stomach, and she nods as well. 

* * *

The sun’s well past risen when Blake wakes up with Yang sprawled half on top of her, and it’s _hot_. The sun always hits her bedroom in the morning-- something she’d never minded before-- and it’s combined with Yang blanketing her to make Blake’s skin prickle uncomfortably. She yawns and realizes one of her hands is buried in Yang’s hair, and her fingers move automatically, dragging softly against Yang’s scalp.

“Morning.”

Blake freezes, eyes snapping open to see Yang half pillowed on her shoulder, half watching her with eyes too bright for first thing in the morning.

“Hey,” Blake says softly, for lack of anything better to say, and Yang smiles at her, and Blake wakes up enough to realize that Yang’s hand is resting casually on her stomach, thumb dragging along her t-shirt and skimming the bottom of her ribcage.

“Hey,” Yang says, wrinkling her nose. “You sleep like the dead.”

“I was tired,” Blake says defensively. The effect is undercut by the way she breaks off into a yawn, and Yang snorts.

“Don’t you normally wake up and go running with Weiss?” Yang’s hand is still moving on her stomach and it’s waking Blake up faster than she expected. Her skin hums under Yang’s touch. 

“Yesterday was a lot,” Blake says, mostly evenly, but not enough to stop Yang from noticing. There’s a slow smile on Yang’s lips, one that Blake knows, and she’s never woken up with Yang before, never spent a full night with her, never had more than greedy touches in the hidden corners of their lives, but her body is waking up under Yang’s touch and she can’t stop herself from staring at Yang’s smile and wanting with the whole of her being to kiss her.

“Sure was,” Yang says, smile disappearing and focus slipping down to Blake’s mouth. Blake falters and opens her mouth, to say that they should get out of bed, that they should get breakfast, that they should do anything but what her body wants her to do. Blake falters and Yang doesn’t wait, surging forward abruptly and kissing her, and Blake responds immediately because she’s never wanted anything as much as she wants Yang. 

There are reasons to stop, to pull back, to wait until they’ve talked more and Yang’s had more time. There are reasons that they should wait, reasons why Blake should hold off until she’s on more solid ground in her life. There’s a whole host of reasons why she should pull her hands away from the skin of Yang’s back and stop Yang from kissing her throat until her eyes roll back into her head, but instead she just holds on tighter and pulls Yang closer. Reason can wait.

* * *

“Is that a _hickey_?”

Weiss is wholly unimpressed when Blake and Yang stroll into the gear room later in the afternoon. They aren’t on call for the rest of the week, but Blake’s gear needs to be checked, and, according to the texts in the group chain that neither Blake nor Yang had checked until around lunchtime, Weiss and Ruby had reached a limit to how much they could hear the both of them through the open windows and escaped to the base.

“Sound a little more surprised,” Yang says drily, making no attempt to hide the bruise blooming on her neck. She drops down onto a stool at the workbench next to Ruby, bumping their shoulders together, and Ruby clears her throat aggressively and very deliberately doesn’t look up from the D-ring she’s cleaning.

Blake follows and takes a seat more delicately, her body aching deliciously after the long morning in bed-- if she hadn’t already needed to change her sheets, she certainly does now, and she winces at the realization that she just left the dirty linens on her bed when they decided to bring lunch to Weiss and Ruby-- and props her chin in her hand. Next to her, Weiss hums disdainfully and hands her a jump helmet with a broken facecage and a screwdriver.

“You two have no shame,” Weiss informs the both of them, and Blake snorts as she sets to removing the damaged cage from the helmet.

“As if we couldn’t _all_ hear you when you were having phone sex with Pyrrha last month,” Blake says, earning a snort from Ruby and an elated whoop from Yang on the other side of the table. “Open windows into that courtyard are _not_ your friend.”

“Oh, and that time you came back from New York and couldn’t sit right for _days_ ,” Yang tacks on. She’s hit in the face with the rag Weiss throws at her, catching it lazily when it drops and picking up one of the D-rings from the pile in front of Ruby and starting to clean it as well. “World champion gold medalist all-around athletic superstar Pyrrha Nikos is _clearly_ just as good in bed as she is on the slopes--”

There’s an enraged huff from Weiss to Blake’s right ,and she just barely manages to drop the screwdriver in time to grab Weiss and stop her from launching over the table at Yang. 

“How about we stop talking about sex at all,” Ruby yells over the sound of Weiss promising a horrifying fate for Yang and Yang laughing uproariously at her in response. 

“Please,” Blake grunts out, still holding onto Weiss around the waist to keep her in check and only barely managing. 

“Let go of me,” Weiss says primly, suddenly freezing in place, and Blake huffs out a sigh and lets go. 

“You’re welcome,” she says when Weiss drops back down onto her stool. 

“I’m ignoring you,” Weiss says, imperious and cool, but there’s a slant to her mouth, a lightness to her eyes, and she doesn’t push back when Blake scoots her stool closer until their shoulders bump up against one another. 

It’s easy to sit there with the three of them, flanking the workbench and cleaning gear while members of the on-call team occasionally stroll in and out, teasing Weiss and being teased by the rest of them for the enormous hickey on Yang’s neck. It’s easier than Blake expected, falling back into a rhythm with her team, now that she’s home. 

Across the table, Yang discards a clean D-ring and picks up a dirty one, pausing to throw a wink Blake’s way. Blake flushes but leans into it, the feeling of being home with her team, home with Yang, back where she’s meant to be with Weiss at her side and Ruby and Yang facing them, all of them listening as Ruby chatters on about a new model of chute she wants to try.

By the time they leave the base, the sun’s started to set, shadows stretching across the parking lot lackadaisically, and Blake walks out towards her car with an arm around Ruby’s shoulders, the two of them watching once again as Yang and Weiss bicker up ahead of them. Ruby is leaning into her side, lazy and familiar, and Blake stares at the back of Yang’s head as she hipchecks Weiss and holds tighter to Ruby without meaning to, because she nearly lost all of them.

“I’m glad you’re back,” Ruby says suddenly. Her pace slows, pulling Blake with her, and Blake blinks away from her focus on the way Yang’s ass looks in her jeans to where Ruby’s straightening up at her side. “She didn’t want to talk to me about it, but I know how torn up she was.”

Blake stiffens, arm dropping away from Ruby’s shoulders and feet stumbling to a stop. Of the three of them, Ruby had been the calmest yesterday, the quickest to forgive. Blake had chalked it up to Ruby trusting her because Yang had already forgiven her, counting her luck and treasuring the way Ruby had smiled at her and hugged her, hard and warm and welcoming, but maybe she’d been too optimistic.

Ruby slows to a stop next to her, shoulders lifting easily into a shrug. It’s easy to forget, sometimes, that Ruby is younger than all of them. She’d fallen into a de facto leadership position from the first time they all jumped together, her eye for strategy and deployment in a wildfire situation outstripping all of the rest of them put together, and they all follow her orders on a job without question. Even just in the year since they all went through training, Blake’s spent enough time chasing after Ruby’s lead that it feels natural to do so, to take her cues from Ruby, to follow her into a fire trusting she’ll bring them all back out again.

It’s easy to forget that Ruby is Yang’s younger sister, earnest and honest and stubborn just like her; someone who loves her sister more than anything in the world. It’s easy to forget that when Blake left them all behind she also left Ruby with a shattered team and a sister who’d been abandoned.

“She doesn’t like to talk to me about her-- you know.” Ruby makes a face and shrugs again, scuffs one shoe against the gravel, so like Yang that it sets Blake’s whole world on its side for a moment. “I don’t know how much of it is because she thinks she’s protecting me and how much is because she just doesn’t want to talk to her little sister about it. But she didn’t talk to me while you were gone, not really.”

Blake’s shoulders slump, her gaze dropping down towards the toes of her shoes because it’s easier than looking Ruby in the eye, looking an account of her failures in the eye. 

“She talked to Weiss a lot,” Ruby says. She doesn’t try to get Blake to look at her, thankfully; Blake’s certain she wouldn’t have been able to handle it if she had. “But I still got the gist of it.”

“I’m sorry,” Blake says lowly. She doesn’t think she’ll ever stop being sorry for the way she left. 

“I’m not mad,” Ruby says, waving one hand lazily, easily, as if Blake’s worry is hardly worth a passing mention, and the ease she dismisses it with burns quietly and comforting in Blake’s chest. “I just-- I’m really glad you’re back. For all of us. And for Yang.”

Blake lunges forward and pulls Ruby up into a hug, ignoring the way she lets out a surprised yelp before Blake buries her face into her hair. 

“Thank you,” Blake mumbles. She hadn’t known, hadn’t realized, how much of her was still waiting for the downside to come crashing down on her, for all of them to decide she wasn’t worth the trouble. Even waking up this morning with Yang flopped on top of her, even after the hours it took for them to stumble out of bed and into the real world, even after the last two hours she spent at the base with her team and the same easy rapport they’ve always had, she’s still waiting for the downside to hit her.

“We’re a team,” Ruby says, arms solid around Blake’s waist. She squeezes tight, until Blake’s ribs ache, but Blake just holds on tighter. “I get why you left, but I’m glad you came back.”

“Me too,” Blake says into her hair, eyes burning. She’s determined not to cry, not now. Not on Ruby’s shoulder after Ruby’s shouldered so much of their team since they finished training. 

Ruby doesn’t say anything, doesn’t pull away, until Blake does first, swiping at her eyes in annoyance. Ruby’s quiet, glancing down at her shoes and giving Blake a moment, another moment, a third to compose herself before glancing back up and bumping her shoulder against Blake’s. 

“Any day now!” Yang bellows from the other side of the parking lot. She’s leaning against the tailgate of her truck where Weiss is sitting with an elbow propped up on Yang’s shoulder.

“God, they’re a terror together,” Blake mutters.

“You have no idea.” Ruby sets off, pulling Blake along by the wrist. “Without you here to balance it out I’ve been _drowning_ in their bullshit.”

“I’m leaving in thirty seconds!” Weiss says, somehow projecting her voice across the whole parking lot without shouting. 

“I’m coming!” Ruby yells back, loud enough that Blake’s ear rings, but she follows along diligently as Ruby drags her across the parking lot. 

“Took you long enough,” Yang says haughtily. She sniffs and holds a hand out for Weiss to lean on as she hops down off the tailgate. “Onwards, heathens.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Ruby slams an elbow into Yang’s ribs on her way to Weiss’s car; Yang nearly doubles over, holding onto Blake for support, and Blake’s skin hums at the contact. 

“Go to the grocery store on your way,” Weiss orders, tapping at the back of Yang’s head where she’s still bent over and strolling over to her car. “It’s your turn to cook.”

“Is not!”

“I could cook,” Blake offers. She recoils immediately when all three of them yell out “ _No!”_ and props her hands on her hips with a glare. “I’m not _that_ bad.”

“You are,” Yang says kindly. She straightens back up and presses a kiss to Blake’s temple. “I’ll cook, don’t worry.”

“Thank God,” Weiss says through the open window in her car. She flips her sunglasses down over her face and peels out of the parking lot, kicking up gravel and dust on her way.

“So dramatic,” Yang mutters. 

“Says _you_ ,” Blake says with a huff. “I’m not that bad a cook.”

“You’re the best campfire cook in the world.” Yang pivots until she can lean against the tailgate of the truck again, hands sliding down Blake’s arms until she can take ahold of her wrists. “You’re just truly terrible at anything involving a kitchen.”

“I am not!”

“You put a plastic mixing bowl in the oven,” Yang counters.

“One time!”

It’s easy, terrifyingly easy, to skip past awkwardness and adjustment and land squarely in the easy conversation she’d always had with Yang. It shouldn’t be so easy to just act like nothing ever happened, but Blake lets Yang pull her closer and closer, until her feet are tangled between Yang’s own and her body’s slanted forward, leaning against Yang. The metal of the tailgate is hot from the afternoon sun but Yang doesn’t seem bothered by it, arms curling around Blake’s lower back.

“Hi,” Blake says, arms lazy over Yang’s shoulders. She’s close enough that her breath flutters the loose strands of Yang’s hair, and Yang smiles, flexes her hands at Blake’s back, nudges forward until she can kiss Blake. 

“Hi,” Yang says. She smiles into it when Blake kisses her again, and Blake melts further into her. It doesn’t seem real, to be this close to her, to touch her and kiss her and hold on to her. Even the base parking lot, dust still lingering in the still air from Weiss’s car, seems brighter than ever. 

A low rumble of car wheels on gravel sounds from the distance, and Yang laughs into the kiss, pulling back and glancing towards the service road. 

“What do you want to bet they’re back here to yell at us for not already being at the grocery store?” Yang says. Blake hums noncommittally, nose nudging against the line of Yang’s jaw until she laughs and tilts her head obediently, laugh tapering off into a soft noise when Blake kisses the hickey she’d left earlier in the day. 

“We should--” Yang says, strangled, and her hands flex at Blake’s waist again. “We’re in the _parking lot_ , we should--”

“Yep,” Blake murmurs against her skin, pressing another kiss under her jaw and letting out a satisfied hum when Yang lets out what sounds suspiciously close to a whine. “Totally.”

The sound of gravel crunching under a car grows closer, the air thickening with dust again, and Blake finally pulls back, feeling the whine from deep in Yang’s throat low in her belly. Yang’s eyes are still closed, and Blake stares at her for a moment, marveling at the sharp cut of her jaw, the expanse of the throat, the way sunlight burns bright against her masses of golden hair.

The car stops behind her and Blake rolls her eyes, keeps her focus on Yang, unwilling to look away. 

“Keep your pants on, Weiss,” Blake says without looking behind her. “We’ll go to the store, don’t worry.”

A car door slams and shoes crunch on gravel, and Yang finally seems to steady herself, pulls her chin back down to level and opens her eyes. They go from half-lidded to wide open in a split second, and Blake stiffens immediately.

“Blake,” Yang says lowly, and Blake pulls back, looks over her shoulder, and nearly falls over scrambling to turn around because it’s not Weiss and Ruby standing there, or any of the other smokejumpers, or the base captain, but Adam.

Blake’s chest tightens and her hands shake as she clenches them into fists, boots crunching on the gravel as she finds her feet and plants herself between Yang and Adam.

“I was hoping to catch you alone,” Adam says, a cruel tilt to one side of his mouth. 

“Get away from me,” Blake spits out. She counts it as a win that her voice doesn’t shake even as her pulse thunders in her chest and the world narrows to nothing but _Adam_ , a walking smirking threat to everything Blake loves, standing right there in front of her. Standing right there in front of _Yang_.

Yang is tense behind her, straightening up from where she’d been leaning against the truck. It should buoy Blake, having Yang standing tall behind her, but instead it sends her worry into a tailspin. She shifts until she’s more squarely in front of Yang, definitively blocking her from stepping forward. Her hands clench at her sides and she knows, she _knows_ , that behind her Yang is bristling but she doesn’t care because she can’t let Adam get to Yang. 

“That’s not very nice,” Adam says, chastising and mocking.

“She has a restraining order,” Yang says, speaking past Blake, and Blake tenses but doesn’t look away from Adam. She doesn’t know how to look away from him, because looking away from Adam is an invitation, a dare, a challenge he’ll have to rise to. 

“Yang,” Blake says lowly. 

“Yeah, Yang,” Adam says with a sneer. “Why don’t you let the adults talk for a minute?”

“Shut up,” Blake spits out. “Don’t you dare talk to her.” Yang’s hand lands on her shoulder, careful and solid, a comfort and a promise, and it steadies Blake, just for a moment. 

“Get out of here,” Blake says firmly. “You know there’s a restraining order on you. Leave now and I won’t call the cops.”

Behind her, Yang is so tense Blake can feel her practically vibrating with repressed energy. Her hand is tight on Blake’s shoulder, a different tension to when she’d been holding onto Blake’s waist barely a minute ago, a tensor cable on a bridge about to give, and Blake goes cold. She shouldn’t have let her guard down.

“But I just got here.” Adam folds his arms over his chest and scowls at her, patronizing and cold. “We have so much to talk about.”

“I swear to God, if you don’t leave now.” Blake wrenches her shoulder free from Yang’s hand, halving the distance between her and Adam in three strides. Fury burns cold in her chest, displacing fear for the first time that she can remember, because Adam is a walking threat, a mortar round threatening to rain down on her whole life, but she has a life, a family, that she’s ready to fight for this time. 

“You’ll what?” Adam sneers at her, the curl of his lip familiar and distant. Once she’d been susceptible to that, his disappointment a risk she never wanted to take, his violence a warning sign keeping her in line. 

Behind her, there’s a scrape of metal, and suddenly Yang’s standing next to her and handing her a fire ax from the bed of her truck. The wood is cool in her hands, and Blake breathes in and exhales slowly, settles the ax more familiarly in her hands. She knows exactly what she can do with a fire ax and, if the flicker in Adam’s eyes and the waver in his sneer are anything to go by, Adam has a pretty good idea.

“Leave.” Blake barely recognizes her own voice. “Now.”

Beside her, Yang has a pulaski propped over one shoulder lazily. There’s a long stretch of silence where Adam doesn’t move, still technically out of range of the ax but just barely, practically vibrating with anger, but then Yang steps forward before Blake can stop her. The pulaski flips in her hands and she shoves the end of the handle into his chest hard enough that he stumbles back into his car.

“You heard her,” Yang says evenly. 

The whole world seems to freeze in place and Blake can’t bring her feet to move, but Adam moves in almost slow motion, finding his feet and lunging forward towards Yang and Blake’s feet uproot abruptly. She shoves her way around Yang and plants herself in front of Adam, ax up for a swing that could knock a football-sized chunk out of a tree trunk if she needed to. 

“Get out of here,” Blake says through heavy breaths. “Don’t _ever_ come near me or her, or I swear to God I’ll make sure you never come near anyone ever again.”

Yang steps up beside her again, pulaski held lazy at her side. She doesn't say anything this time, instead just standing silently at her side, and it grounds Blake, keeps her grip steady on the ax. 

Adam glances from Blake to Yang and then back again, jaw clenching and eyes wide, almost manic, a snarl building in his throat.

“She’ll leave you, too,” he says, attention shifting abruptly back to Yang. “Just like she left me. It’s what she does.”

“Fuck you, man,” Yang says. Irritation drips from her voice, as if she’s dealing with a telemarketer and not the violent personification of all of the worst choices Blake’s ever made. “If she does, that’s her choice. It’s not mine and it’s sure as hell not yours. Go crawl back into your hole.”

Blake wants to look at her, to map the line of her jaw and the strength in her shoulders, to look in her eyes and see the truth in her words, the promise, the future they haven’t spoken about yet, but she can’t look away from Adam. Adrenaline thrums in her veins and her forearms ache from how tight a grip she has on the ax, but she doesn’t waver, doesn’t rest, doesn’t even breathe as she stares at Adam.

“Leave,” Blake says sharply. “Now.”

There’s an agonizing long moment of silence, of all three of them frozen in place, Adam’s jaw clenching and fists flexing at his side, but then he finally moves. Blake stares unblinking at him as he drops back into his car and revs the engine, throwing up heavy chunks of gravel and plumes of dust as he speeds out of the parking lot. 

Blake doesn’t move, ax still pulled back for a swing, staring at the space where Adam had stood.

“Hey,” Yang says gently, carefully. She drops the pulaski and reaches out carefully, fingers sliding along the back of Blake’s hands on the ax handle. “Put it down, babe. He’s gone.”

Blake’s arms shake and the ax falls abruptly from her grip, blade narrowly missing her boots as it clatters down onto the ground, and it’s only Yang who keeps her from falling when her knees give out. Yang holds her up, arms strong at her waist and lips pressed into her hair, and a deep, wracking sob bursts out of Blake. 

“It’s okay,” Yang says into her hair. She says it over and over again, as Blake’s fingernails dig into her back and her entire weight is leaned against Yang. Blake is shaking, the loss of adrenaline sudden and fierce, and her body gives up, collapsing into Yang. “It’s okay.”

The afternoon shadows have stretched out further across the parking lot and the dust has faded from Adam’s car by the time Blake pulls herself back upright. Her chest aches and her throat is gummy, eyes burning from crying. She’s sitting on the tailgate of Yang’s truck somehow, curled into her side with her fingers knotted into her shirt, the wrinkles an additional insult to the injury of how wet her shoulder is from Blake crying into it.

“Hey,” Yang says carefully. There’s no tension left in her posture, no set to her jaw, nothing but worry written plain into her eyes and the soft rounded edges to her voice. “You okay?”

Blake straightens up as best she can, exhaustion dragging at her bones. She doesn’t feel okay. There’s a weight in her chest, an ache dragging at her stomach that insists this wasn’t a victory. Her hands are cramped from how hard she held onto the ax, onto Yang, onto her shirt as she cried. She’s not okay because Adam may have left but there’s no reason to expect he won’t come back. She’s not okay.

“I’m okay,” she says, wavering and halting and uncertain. “Thanks.”

“It’s going to be okay,” Yang says, solid and firm and certain. “You can tell the cops that he violated the order and--”

She cuts off when Blake curls back into her side, burying her face into the side of Yang’s neck and breathing in shakily. Yang’s arms circle around her automatically, and Blake pushes closer and wills herself not to cry again. 

“Do you want me to take you to the police station?” One of Yang’s hands holds steady at the back of her head, stabilizing her, grounding her, and Blake swallows another wave of tears, breathes in, nods. 

“Not yet,” she says anyways. Her voice is muffled in Yang’s shoulder. “I just-- need a minute.”

“Sure,” Yang says. Her fingers work their way through Blake’s hair, dragging against her scalp softly and holding her steady, and Blake breathes out shakily and sinks into the feeling. “Whatever you need. We’ve got time.”

She’s wrong, Blake is sure of it, but she can’t pinpoint why. Adam won’t leave her alone, won’t leave _them_ alone, especially not now that Yang has stood up with her against him. He’ll still be there, somehow, lurking just past the edges of the restraining order, violent and dangerous. 

Yang pulls back until she can press a kiss against Blake’s forehead, devastatingly soft and sure, and it overwrites every pinpoint of fear prickling at her skin, overwhelms the knot of certainty in her chest that not even reporting this to the police will be enough. Yang kisses her, mouth gentle against hers and thumb dragging along her cheekbone, and it overwhelms Blake’s worry and drags her into the present, the present where they’re alone and Adam is gone and they’re _okay_ as long as they’re together.

The certainty carries her forward, into Yang’s truck and the comfortable quiet on the drive to the police station, through reporting Adam to the detective who’d filed her restraining order. Blake is quiet and calm the whole time, less a burst of nerves than she was yesterday-- just _yesterday_ , so long ago, when she’d been here to file the restraining order the first time, long before she’d made it home to Yang, found her forgiveness, slept next to her and found the pieces of her life just waiting for her to put them back into place-- and Yang is stalwart at her side the whole time, texting Weiss and Ruby to let them know what happened, bringing Blake a cup of tea while she recounts the experience to the detective, holding her hand under the table while the talks. 

“Thank you,” Blake says softly as they leave the police station. Her fingers are intertwined with Yang’s, hands swinging lightly between them as they walk through the streetlights to where Yang’s truck is parked. 

“Of course,” Yang says, flashing a grin at her. It lights up her eyes in a way that the fluorescents overhead never could, and it settles warm in Blake’s chest. Yang’s smile lives behind her sternum in the exact same place her fear of Adam had, filling her chest and leaving no room for worry, for doubt, for fear, and Blake sinks into the way it leaks out from her chest, winding around her ribcage and settling warm in her stomach, comforting and solid and confident. 

“Ruby ordered delivery,” Yang says once they’re in the truck. She pulls out of the parking lot, driving with one hand on the steering wheel and arm stretched across the cabin, hand held between both of Blake’s and resting in her lap. “Apparently there was a great debate over it and Weiss won, so they got sushi. They used the spare key and put some in your fridge already.”

“I’m sure Ruby’s delighted,” Blake says, smiling down at their hands in her lap. 

“According to Weiss, and I quote,” Yang says brightly. “‘It’s not my fault she has a tell in rock paper scissors, and I will not concede just to make her feel better.’”

“Sounds about right,” Blake says with a hum. She shifts until she can leans against the door of the truck, facing Yang more squarely. Yang glances sideways at her, one side of her mouth slanting up into a smile, and the passing street lights as they leave downtown and make their way out towards their apartment complex light up her profile periodically. 

“After dinner,” Yang says after six miles pass in silence as Blake studies her profile. She pauses, clears her throat, taps a thumb absently against the steering wheel. “If you want, I can sleep at your place again. If you want.”

Blake raises an eyebrow, unfettered calm settled over her shoulders like a blanket, because Yang had showed up at her doorstep last night, slept in her bed, curled around Blake in her sleep, woken up and kissed her like she never wanted to let her go, but now she’s blushing in the dim light of the truck as she offers to stay with Blake overnight.

Blake watches her for long moments, houses outside the truck blurring into trees as they leave the city limits. There’s an anxious twitch to Yang’s thumb as it taps rapidly against the steering wheel, a flush smearing across her cheeks the longer Blake takes to respond.

“I’d like that,” Blake finally says. “But I think you should talk to Ruby.”

“What?” Yang’s eyebrows skid up towards her hairline and she looks away from the road long enough to glance across the cab, forehead creasing. “About what?”

“About-- this,” Blake says haltingly, gesturing vaguely at the space between them. “I know you talked to Weiss while I was gone, but not Ruby.”

“Oh,” Yang says faintly. “I didn’t-- it’s not like I was hiding anything from her.”

Blake squeezes her hand, fingertips tracing along her knuckles, dragging down towards her wrist and then back up again absently. She wants, more than anything, to go home and fall asleep pressed against Yang, to wake up again tomorrow half-pinned under her and her sweltering body heat, to spend every morning waking up with Yang and every night falling asleep with her. A deep, fiery need for it pulses in her chest, and she clears her throat and shakes her head.

“She missed you,” Blake says. She stares down at Yang’s hand in hers. “I know you aren’t hiding things from her, but you should still talk to her. About, you know. _Us_.” 

“She knows about us,” Yang counters, but there’s a retiring edge to her voice, the one that means she’s not actually arguing, her protests more token than substantial.

“She’s your sister.” A smile tugs at Blake’s lips, and she pulls at Yang’s hand until she can kiss her knuckles. “And your best friend. Just talk to her, okay?”

“You’re right,” Yang says, half mumbling and half sighing, and Blake drags her fingernails absently from Yang’s wrist to her elbow and back, smiling wider at the visible shudder that works through Yang’s body when she does. “Unfair.”

“You love it,” Blake says, taunting and easy, and it’s not until Yang’s mouth snaps shut that she realizes what she’s said.

“Maybe I do,” Yang says after a second. She glances over towards Blake and heat pricks at Blake’s skin under Yang’s gaze, sharp and unrelenting even if it’s only brief before she looks back to the road. Yang slows down as they reach the apartment complex, pulling into the parking lot and parking neatly between Blake’s car and Weiss’s. 

There’s a long moment of silence after Yang pulls her right hand free so she can turn off the engine. Blake’s palms ache at the emptiness between them, and she winds them together in her lap. Yang unclicks her seatbelt and shifts in her seat, dragging one knee up onto the bench seat until she’s facing Blake, elbow propped on the back of the seat and temple leaning on her fist.

The air in the cab seems to crack, charged and heavy, crackling like an overheated forest fire boiling the sap in the tree trunks as it spreads, and Blake bites down on her lip because Yang is looking at her, predatory and heated, and Blake wants to take everything back, wants to carry Yang into her bed and never let her leave. 

Instead, Blake unclicks her own seatbelt, careful and methodical, and opens the door behind her. She keeps her focus on steadying her hands, though she swears she can feel Yang’s gaze burning at the back of her neck as she steps down out of the truck and closes the door carefully. There’s the sound of Yang’s door opening and closing as well, boots on concrete, and Blake’s hand falls into Yang’s automatically as they make their way towards Blake’s door.

“I should go, right,” Yang mutters, watching as Blake fumbles with her keys and unlocks her door. She’s too close, too warm, too _everything_ , and Blake nearly drops her keys. Yang’s free hand settles at the curve of her hip, so warm surely it’s burning through Blake’s shirt, leaving a permanent mark on her skin, and Blake inhales sharply and shuts her eyes. 

“Yeah,” she says. She turns, pulling her hip out of Yang’s grasp, and nearly doubles over as it drags Yang’s fingertips along her skin, from one hip to the other, a line of heat rising low in her stomach. “Talk to Ruby.”

“I can come over for breakfast tomorrow,” Yang says, eyes sparking as she tilts closer, and Blake can’t stop herself from pushing up on her toes and pressing a kiss to Yang’s mouth.

“Breakfast,” Blake gasps out when she has to pull away to breathe. The whine it draws out of Yang sits heavy in her bones, weighty and wanting, and Blake shakes her head and steps backwards through her open door, clearing her throat heavily.

“Yeah,” Yang says, pouting and endearing, and a surge of want climbs up Blake’s throat.

“Yeah,” Blake echoes, her voice ragged and unrecognizable. “I’m going to go now.”

“Okay,” Yang says, leaning forward across the threshold and kissing Blake again anyways. “Totally leaving.”

“Yep.” Blake kisses her again, one hand clenching around her keys and the other pulling at Yang’s shirt, holding her in place. “Absolutely.”

It’s another minute-- maybe two, maybe three; Blake’s not interested in counting-- before Yang finally steps back. Color burns high on her cheeks, brightening her eyes impossibly in the dim lights outside the apartment, and Blake nearly surges forward again from where she’s pressed against the doorjamb. Yang clears her throat and straightens her shirt, glances down towards her own front door. 

“You were going home,” Blake says faintly, uselessly, her entire body aching with the need to pull Yang inside and keep her there. “To talk to Ruby.”

“Yep,” Yang says, popping the _p_ and shoving her hands into her pockets. “I was. Doing that. For sure.”

The aching pulse pinning Blake into place lessen, softens, relaxes into something calmer, quieter, more affection and less burning need, and she smiles and steps further back into her apartment, one hand on the doorknob. Yang watches her, gaze slipping down to where there’s surely a bruise blooming on Blake’s throat, further down towards the way her collar is too open over her chest, and clears her throat loudly.

“Night,” Yang says faintly. “Breakfast?”

“Breakfast,” Blake confirms. “I can cook.”

“Please don’t,” Yang says. “Your stove is probably full of dust. I don’t think it would handle being turned on after being left alone for so long.”

“Just for that, I want that brioche French toast,” Blake says with a _hmph_. “With that blueberry thing.”

“Of course you do,” Yang huffs out. She takes another step back, and then one to the side, edging further from Blake’s door and closer to her own. “The _one_ breakfast I stress over.”

“Should’ve been nicer to me, then.” Blake folds her arms over her chest and leans one shoulder against the doorjamb, watching as Yang backs slowly away. There’s a grin on her face, sheepish and easy, and Blake watches with a pocket of warmth in her chest as Yang finally makes it to her own door.

“Good night,” Blake says, her voice traveling through the quiet of the dark easily.

“G’night.” Yang finally looks away to fit her key into the lock, pausing only to salute Blake, exaggerated and comical, and Blake laughs because there’s nothing else she can do, easy and comfortable. Yang winks dramatically at her and then leaps in through her open door, kicking one heel out behind her for flair.

Blake’s only just made it the rest of the way into her apartment and found the sushi in her fridge when her phone vibrates.

 _Next time you two want to make out, do it inside._ Irritation drips out of Weiss’s text in the group chain, and Blake rolls her eyes and digs a pair of chopsticks out of her drawers. _Some of us just want to exist in peace_.

 _Not our fault your gf is in Chile for training._ Yang’s reply comes through immediately, followed promptly by a vomit emoji from Ruby. Blake snorts and takes her sushi out onto the back terrace, settling down into the cool summer evening to eat.

 _Remember that time we could all hear you having phone sex?_ Blake taps out, hitting send with a flourish. 

A distressed yell sounds from the patio two doors away in one direction, a chorus of laughter from three doors away in the other, and Blake settles back in satisfaction and pops a spicy tuna roll into her mouth. She props her feet up onto the other chair on the patio and wiggles more comfortably down into hers, picking another piece of sushi and grabbing it with her chopsticks. There’s an indignant response from Weiss in the group text, and Blake settles in with her sushi. It’s a good night.


	7. Chapter 7

> _stoichiometric mixture_ : in terms of flammability limits of gas/air mixtures the stoichiometric mixture is the 'ideal' mixture that will produce a most complete combustion - i.e.; it is somewhere between the upper and lower explosive limits and an ignition at the stoichiometric point may result in the most severe deflagration, in relation to those near the upper and lower limits of flammability.

Blake snaps into wakefulness abruptly and is on her feet before she realizes she’s awake. Her phone-- almost dead, left on her chest where she’d fallen asleep hours ago after texting with Yang until almost midnight-- clatters down to the floor and clips her foot, and her nose is full of the smell of smoke. It’s a more effective wake up call than any alarm clock, and she pauses, breathes, listens. She presses a hand against the walls of her bedroom, the door, and feels nothing. It’s not her apartment, and she glances out the window and breathes in again before wrenching a window open and leaning out, looking right and left and then letting out a curse.

Three doors down, smoke is pouring out of the back of Yang and Ruby’s apartment.

Blake sprints out of her bedroom, phone in one hand already calling 911, and shoves her feet into the boots by her front door. She nearly runs into Weiss when she steps out her door, and grips at her hand to stay upright and then follows her at a run towards Ruby and Yang’s apartment. The front door is still closed, and Blake slams her shoulder into the door. 

“Wait--” Weiss starts, and Blake ignores her, moves to slam into it again. “Blake, _wait_ , just-- together, okay?” 

She yanks Blake back and keeps ahold of her arm, and Blake inhales against the pain in her shoulder and then exhales into the impact of slamming into the door with Weiss. It takes another before the door breaks around the deadbolt and Blake yanks her shirt up over her nose and ducks under the smoke filling their living room on her way in. 

“Yang!” Blake yells out and gets a lungful of smoke for it. Behind her, Weiss calls out for Ruby. Blake’s eyes burn-- it’s been so long since she was in a house fire, so long since she had to deal with smoke in an indoor space, so long since she had to crawl through smoke and dodge furniture. 

They’ve made it halfway into the living room when Ruby slams into them, nearly toppling all three of them. 

“Fuck,” Blake gasps out, and she yanks Ruby into a hug. 

“You okay?” Weiss says sharply. “Where’s Yang?”

“We have to get her,” Ruby says, coughing around the words. Her eyes are wide and watering, and her fingers dig into Blake’s arm. “Her room, it started there--”

“Get her out of here,” Blake says, slotting a glance over towards Weiss, and Weiss glares right back.

“Fuck off,” Weiss says sharply. “We’re faster as a team.”

“You need to--”

“Let’s _go_ ,” Ruby snaps out, already heading towards Yang’s room. 

Blake follows without question, her body snapping to attention at an undeniable order, and Weiss does as well. The smoke is thicker at Yang’s door, pouring out from under it, and Blake’s pulse stutters and stumbles, nausea churning in her stomach. Ruby breathes in deep under the smoke and straightens up, steadying herself to break the door down, and Blake reaches without realizing it, yanking her back down.

“We have to--”

“The whole building could go,” Blake says, the words aching in her throat. 

“Yang’s in there!” Ruby’s voice cracks but her eyes dim immediately, and Blake hates herself for it. Yang and Ruby were urban firefighters just like she was. They all know what happens if they open that door, how many other peoples’ lives in the building they would be putting at risk. Ruby shakes her head and slams a fist against the door, yelling her sister’s name and descending into a coughing fit as she does. 

Blake grabs for her, wrapping her up in a bear hug to hold her still, and Weiss takes over, slamming a fist into the door and yelling for Yang as well. Blake’s chest burns, from smoke and from fear and from the realization that she might never make things right with Yang, might have lost her forever, might have--

“I’m okay!” It’s nearly swallowed in the sound of the fire and disappears into coughs, and Blake’s heart stops for a moment. There’s no way that’s Yang, but then: “Door’s blocked, going out the window.”

“Yang?” Ruby’s half yelling, half crying, and she slumps in Blake’s arms, nearly taking them both down. 

“Get out of here!” Yang bellows from the other side of the door, and Blake’s body responds like it always does to Yang, straightening up and hauling Ruby up with her. There’s a crash of breaking glass from the bedroom, and Blake manhandles Ruby around, pointing them back towards the front door.

The smoke is thicker but her chest is lighter, and by the time she makes it to the front door she barely has time to stand up straight before Ruby’s off at a sprint towards the end of the building. Blake chases after her, Weiss’s footsteps right behind them; Blake’s boots skid on the dirt as they round the corner into the three-sided courtyard behind the building, Weiss hauling her up without breaking stride, and make it to the back of the building in time to see Ruby skidding across the ground on her knees at Yang’s side.

Yang is coughing and gasping for breath, her skin flushed and eyes bloodshot, and one hand digs into Ruby’s back when she’s dragged up into a lopsided hug. A groan whistles past her teeth and Ruby jerks back, nearly dropping her, and Blake, stopped dead six feet away with a hand digging into Weiss’s shoulder, nearly collapses because Yang’s right arm is covered in burns, starting at her wrist and licking up past her elbow towards her shoulder. 

“Oh, God,” Weiss says softly. One of her hands comes up to cover Blake’s, shaking fingers pressing too hard into her wrist. The air splits around the sound of sirens. 

“We should go meet them,” Blake says without looking away from Yang, from the ruined flesh of her arm and the way she’s taking deep gasping breaths and Ruby’s laid her out on the ground and is talking to her in a low urgent voice.

“I’ll go,” Weiss says immediately. She shoves Blake towards Ruby and Yang and sets off at a run, but Blake stays in place, a hand over her mouth and legs shaking because Yang is alive, barely, but Blake hadn’t been able to save her. None of them had. It was only sheer luck-- that they lived on the first floor, that the window was a viable exit, that the fire hadn’t spread so fast that Yang was unconscious before she could escape. 

She’s jostled out of the way as the firefighters appear, hauling a line with them to direct water and suppressant through the ruined windows of Yang’s room, and Weiss’s hand appears on her shoulder again. Paramedics crowd past and Weiss follows, prying Ruby away from Yang’s side so the paramedics can work, and Ruby fights her for a long second before collapsing into her side, face buried into Weiss’s shoulder and back shaking under Weiss’s hold, and Blake’s feet stay rooted in place. 

Weiss glances over at her, worry written plain into the tension in her jawline, and Blake blinks, breathes, shakes her head. 

“The other apartments,” she says stupidly. “They need to-- I’ll go.”

Weiss glares at her, mouth opening to speak, but Blake’s already on the move, finally able to uproot her boots from the ground. It’s easier to sprint back around to the front, to pound on doors and wake people up and get them out of their apartments, than it is to stay and face the way Yang nearly died, the ruination of her arm. 

She doesn’t stop moving until a paramedic grabs her and shoves her onto a bed in an ambulance and glares at her until Blake accepts the oxygen mask handed to her. Yang’s ambulance had left ages ago, siren screaming into the sky and waking up anyone who might have still been asleep in the building, and Blake takes a deep inhale through the oxygen mask and then passes out.

* * *

There’s still an oxygen mask on her face when she wakes up to a familiar hospital’s ceilings. She drags it away with a sigh, lets it fall to the side of the bed she’s on, and sits up slowly. She’s in an emergency room bay, two beds sequestered off from the rest of the department with a curtain. The other bed is mussed, a plastic hospital bag full of clothes tossed onto it, and Blake grabs the oxygen mask for one more inhale and swings her feet off the bed. 

The bag is full of what looks like Weiss’s clothes. Blake glances back over to her bed and finds a set of scrubs folded at the foot of it. She looks down at her own clothes and sniffs at the collar of her shirt with a frown. She smells like smoke and dirt, but it’s not like when she’s been out in the woods fighting a fire, sweat and ash a marker of work done well. This is smoke from Yang and Ruby’s apartment, from the fire that almost killed Yang, and the bag of Weiss’s clothes crinkles when her hands flex involuntarily.

She’s just finished changing into the scrubs, movements mechanical and exhausted, when the curtain pulls back to reveal Ruby. She’s in scrubs as well, her eyes red and hair a mess, and Blake drops the bag she’d been filling with her own clothes and freezes in place.

“You okay?” Ruby says hoarsely. “Weiss said you passed out.”

“I--yeah,” Blake hurries out. “I’m fine.” She shoves her hands into the pockets of her scrubs. “How are you?”

Ruby shrugs and folds her arms over her stomach, offers half a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “Some smoke inhalation and scrapes, but I’m fine.” 

“Good,” Blake says after a moment. “How--um--”

“They gave her something to keep her out for a while,” Ruby says. Her head tilts to one side, then the other, as if her body’s too tired to formulate a real shrug. 

“How bad is it?” It peels off the back of her throat, scraping and aching, and Blake wraps her arm around her stomach as well, holding her pieces in place. 

“Second degree, mostly. Some third.” Ruby’s voice wavers for a moment but she steadies it, sets her jaw and resets her posture. “The doctors said she should be fine eventually, but it’ll be a painful recovery.”

“Right,” Blake breathes out. She leans against the bed behind her, legs unsteady, though from exhaustion or relief, she can’t tell. 

“The FD station chief came by a little while ago,” Ruby adds, unreadable. “Based on the burn patterns he’s opening an investigation.”

Blake’s head whips up fast enough that her neck aches and the world tilts around her, air escaping from her lungs. Of course it was arson. There’s no way that an elite firefighter like Yang would have had anything in her room to start a fire. Her mind vaults back to yesterday, to Yang putting herself between Blake and Adam, tall and strong and pushing back against Adam’s threats, and she collapses back onto the bed.

“I’m so sorry,” she says without meaning to. One hand presses over her mouth, holding back the way a scream is building in her chest.

“It’s not your fault,” Ruby says firmly. She leans against the bed next to Blake, pushes one shoulder against hers. “None of this is your fault.”

“I never should have--”

“Don’t,” Ruby says over her. 

“But--”

“Blake,” Ruby says sharply, an order and a protest, and Blake’s mouth snaps shut because there are few things more automatic now than responding to Ruby when she’s in leader mode. “Stop it. If he did this it’s _not_ your fault.”

Blake stares down at her feet, shoved into the boots she’d grabbed on her way out the door, laces untied and too-long scrub pants bunching at the ankles. 

“Can I see her?” she finally says, because she can’t speak to anything else. She can’t speak to how wrong Ruby is, how responsible Blake is for this, how Adam has always been her monster, how she brought him into their lives and now Yang’s in a hospital bed with an arm that might be permanently ruined. 

“Weiss is with her right now,” Ruby says with a nod. “Want me to walk you up there?”

Blake nods miserably and doesn’t fight it when Ruby reaches over to take one of her clenched hands, unwinds it from the fist she’d balled it into and holds tight to her palm. It’s a long walk to the ICU, three floors up and on the opposite end of the building, and Ruby keeps ahold of her hand the whole time. 

The nurses cast sympathetic looks towards Ruby as they make their way down the hall to where a police officer is sitting outside one of the rooms. Blake’s hand tightens in Ruby’s, a question dying in her throat, and Ruby glances up at her and squeezes back.

“Since it looks like targeted arson, the police are treating it like an attempted murder,” Ruby says evenly, calmly, as if she’s not explaining how someone-- someone Blake brought down on all of them-- tried to murder her older sister hours ago. 

The police officer nods at them when they go by, murmuring a soft “ _Ma’am_ ,” to Ruby as she opens the door softly. Blake’s feet root to the floor in the doorway for a moment, the soft sounds of heart monitors and oxygen tanks, IV drips and a ticking clock on the wall, hammer in her ears. 

Weiss looks up from where she’s standing stiffly beside the bed, both hands curled around Yang’s uninjured left hand. Yang is unconscious, just like Ruby had said, her hair swept up into a messy bun on top of her head to keep it out of the way. Her right arm is covered in burn dressings that reach from her shoulder down to her fingertips; there’s another dressing peeking out from the loose neck of her hospital gown, another burn over her collarbone. Her left arm is full of needles and her chest covered in leeds. She looks smaller than Blake could have ever imagined, the breadth of her shoulders disappearing into the hospital bed; her hair, bright and unruly even when they’re four days into a five-day call in the middle of the woods and haven’t showered in ages, is dull and lackluster.

Blake’s hand goes slack in Ruby’s and she stops two steps into the room. Her lungs refuse to inflate, her feet refuse to move, and she’s certain she’s on her way to passing out again-- because Yang is hurt, because Yang almost died, because it’s all her _fault_ and she should have never come back to them no matter how much she wanted Yang, wanted this family she’d found-- when Weiss’s voice cuts through the fog of panic swelling in her chest.

“Ruby, you should stay for a while,” Weiss says firmly. “Rounds are due soon, so the doctor will probably be able to give you an update. Blake,” she adds, sharp and unwavering.

Blake blinks and shakes her head, digs her fingernails into her palm. “Yeah?”

“Let’s go get Ruby some coffee,” Weiss says. “It’s going to be a long night.”

“I--”

“Now,” Weiss says, and Blake withers under it and nods, lets herself be carted out of the room by Weiss and dragged back down the hall she’d just walked up.

Weiss doesn’t speak until they’re in the elevator, her arms folded over her chest and one finger tapping rapidly against her bicep. 

“You need to snap out of it,” Weiss says bluntly. “Pretty much right the hell now.”

Blake recoils, one shoulder bumping into the elevator wall behind her, and defensiveness and guilt war in her chest because this is her fault, because she brought this down on all of them, because it’s important for her to be aware of her own faults because without them she doesn’t know what to use as a guidepost--

“If you leave again.” Weiss jabs a finger into her chest, glaring up at her and jabbing it into her chest again. “If you leave her behind again, I will ignore the fact that I haven’t touched my family’s money since I was seventeen just so I can track you down and drag you back here.” 

Blake stares at her, mouth opening and closing rapidly, too lost in a swirl of uncertainty to mount a defense against the fact that Weiss hasn’t looked at her so disdainfully since the very first day of training, before they were friends, before they were a team, before they were a family.

“I know you’re scared,” Weiss says, softer suddenly, and she picks up one of Blake’s hands and holds it carefully, leads her out of the elevator, and Blake stumbles after her. “But this isn’t your fault, and running away won’t make anything better. Ruby and I were here when you were gone, and it _wrecked_ her. If she wakes up and you're not there, I don’t know if she’ll be able to handle it. So you’re going to stay, and we’re all going to help deal with this as a team, okay?”

“I don’t think--”

“Blake.” Weiss drops her hand and blocks her path into the empty hospital cafeteria. “You blaming yourself for anything he did is useless. You’re not responsible for him. Adam did this, not you. We all know that you’d never hurt Yang.”

“I already did though,” Blake says, and then snaps her mouth shut, throat aching miserably. 

“You did, yes.” Weiss plants her hands on her hips and she’s swimming in scrubs at least four sizes too big for her but Blake’s certain she’s never seen anything larger, more solid, more promising and certain than this. “But you came home. You came _back_. That matters, and Yang knows it. We all know it. You made a mistake, but you still came back to her. And this is a horrible thing that happened, but it’s not _your_ horrible thing. This isn’t your crime, and Yang will wake up and she’ll recover from this, and you will be with her every step of the way, because you want to be and because if you aren’t I will hunt you down and ruin you. Okay?”

Blake blinks up at the ceiling and breathes in shakily, and then again, and again, because Weiss is right. Somewhere past the guilt and the terror and the neverending certainty that she deserves every single bad thing that’s ever happened to her, there’s a small seed of certainty that knows that Weiss is right. That Adam is a monster but he isn’t _her_ monster, that she didn’t create him, that’s she’s not to blame for his cruelty and violence. 

“Okay?” Weiss says again, harsher, more expectant, and Blake lets out a burst of an exhale.

“Okay,” she echoes. “Okay.”

Weiss nods once, sharp like everything about her-- except she’s not sharp, Blake knows, she’s one of the kindest people Blake’s ever met, just like Yang, just like Ruby, all three of them everything Blake’s known she’s too soiled to ever be-- and pivots, pushes the cafeteria doors open. 

“Come on.” She glances back over her shoulder without breaking stride, as if to confirm that Blake’s following her, as if there were a question there. They’re a team, a family, the four of them, and Blake shelves her guilt and follows Weiss without question.

* * *

Yang drifts in and out of consciousness for three days, as delirious from the pain drugs as she is from the pain itself. They rotate in and out of her room in shifts, ensuring that she’s never alone for any of the moments she swims towards consciousness. The doctors assure them that she’ll recover-- though her mobility of her arm remains in question-- and that they’re doing everything she needs. 

It’s a long three days of never leaving the hospital. The only glimpses of sunlight Blake gets are when she’s down in the cafeteria with Ruby or Weiss, depending on whose turn it is to stand at Yang’s bedside-- the nurses apologize every time they come in that there aren’t any guest chairs in the ICU-- and the police guard outside her door is constant and silent.

On the second day, a detective shows up and talks to each of them in turn, and Blake sits stiffly across from him in the cafeteria and answers every question, tells him about Adam; about his threats, his violence, his possessiveness; the way Yang challenged him. She swallows her guilt and the way she wants him to burn for what he did to Yang, for the way he left Yang in immeasurable pain and left Blake to watch the aftermath, and tells the detective everything she possibly can about Adam Taurus. 

On the third day, Pyrrha Nikos shows up at the hospital with changes of clothes for all of them from Weiss’s apartment, and Blake stares dumbly at her when she introduces herself, as if it’s perfectly normal for a world famous athlete to just stroll into the ICU of a hospital in Montana and offer Blake a pair of borrowed but clean sweatpants that don’t really reach all the way to her ankles. 

It’s later that day, well into the night, when Blake’s in Yang’s room and pacing quietly because it’s all she can do to keep her mind occupied, when Yang wakes up and stays awake. 

“Hi,” Yang says, raspy and cracking, and Blake nearly falls with how fast she turns around. Her chest aches and her hands hang stupidly at her sides, because Yang’s eyes are open and unclouded for the first time in days. 

“Hey.” Blake rushes back across the room, slamming to a stop at her side and leaving her hands hovering out uselessly over Yang’s side. “Are you-- how are you feeling?”

Yang closes her eyes and breathes in deep, tongue swiping at her cracked lips, and groans softly. “Great,” she says weakly, opening one eye and offering something approximating a smile. “Super great.”

“You’re a terrible liar,” Blake says, but a laugh bubbles out of her chest and she finally manages to reach out and pick up Yang’s left hand, curling it into both of hers gently. She wants to crawl into the bed and wrap around Yang, to hold her and feel her heartbeat and the way that she’s alive and awake even if her right arm is destroyed; wants to yell, to cry, to kiss Yang and never let go of her again. She settles instead for bending over the hand she has clutched in her own until she can press her lips to Yang’s knuckles. 

“Everyone okay?” Yank croaks out. Her fingers twitch in Blake’s hold, weak but grasping, holding onto her. 

“Yeah, yeah, everyone is fine,” Blake says softly. She sniffs and straightens up, wipes her watering eyes on her shoulder awkwardly because she can’t let go of Yang, not now that she’s awake. “I--the fire was contained. No injuries, no casualties besides your apartment.”

“Okay,” Yang says with a wheeze. “Good.” She breathes in, rattling and aching, and Blake squeezes her hand tighter to keep herself in place. “What caused it?”

Blake’s heartbeat doubles and then drops out, the room roaring around her for a long moment. Of course Yang would ask, would need to know, what had happened, why she was the only one who was hurt. Of course she would ask how the fire started. 

Blake breathes in slowly and then exhales, and then does it again, and again, wishing Ruby or Weiss would show up to answer Yang’s questions. 

“It was Adam,” Blake finally says. Her jaw clenches as she does her best to keep herself calm, to not look away from Yang’s uncertain gaze as it morphs into understanding. “He--the fire department’s investigating it and there isn’t a formal report yet, but it looks like he threw a molotov cocktail through your window.”

Her resolve breaks when Yang blinks slowly at her, and Blake pulls in a shuddering breath and blinks away tears, sniffing loudly as she does, because Yang’s still staring up at her as she processes the information and Blake’s never wanted more to be both exactly where she is and as far away from where she is as possible.

“I’m so sorry.” She finally breaks and the words crack out of her mouth. Her hands go slack around Yang’s-- surely Yang needs time, and space, and distance from Blake-- and she moves to step back, to leave and find the doctor, to find Ruby, to find a corner to hide her as she breaks down. But then Yang’s hand tightens weakly around hers, holding fast, and Blake freezes in place.

“Don’t leave,” Yang says. Blake chances a look up at her, blurred around the edges because her eyes are full of tears, but Yang’s eyes are sharp and bright, unsullied by the pain or the medication she’s on, the same bright bursts of light Blake fell in love with months ago. “Stay.”

Blake sucks in a cracking rattling breath, her posture slipping and shoulders dropping suddenly, and three days of uncertainty, six months of going from wanting Yang to needing her to loving her, a decade of guilt, expand and compress and ignite in her chest and leave her gasping for breath, tears welling in her eyes. 

“Are you sure?” she says, her voice thick and uncertain. “I-- Adam did this because of me. How can you want me to--”

“I don’t care,” Yang says over her. Her hand tightens in Blake’s, fingers flexing and wavering, their usual strength sapped away from fatigue and trauma and medication, but she holds on anyways. “I want you. Stay.”

“Fuck,” Blake gasps out, slumping over their hands. Her legs shake and for the first time since she walked into this room, she wishes desperately for a chair to fall into. “I-- _fuck_ , Yang, I’m so fucking sorry. I should have known-- I should have protected you from him--”

“Blake,” Yang says, and her voice is hardly recognizable for how hoarse it is, but Blake’s certain there’s nothing better in the world than her name in Yang’s mouth. “Stop, please.”

“Sorry,” Blake says automatically. She swipes at her eyes with one hand and then goes back to holding onto Yang’s with both of hers. 

“I don’t want you to protect me,” Yang says. Her words are slowing, exhaustion dragging at the syllables and eyes starting to droop, but she shakes her head and breathes in deep, exhales slowly. “We’re partners. We take care of each other, okay? It’s not just on you.”

Blake stares down at her and the way she’s fighting against her fatigue to stare up at Blake and set her jaw, fighting to stay awake so Blake can answer her. There’s so much pain in her eyes and Blake’s stomach twists because she’s had third degree burns before and knows how much it has to hurt, but Yang is staring up at her stubbornly and insisting that Blake didn’t fail her.

“Okay,” Blake says finally. “Okay.” She bends down to kiss Yang’s hand again, lips lingering on her knuckles, only to jerk back when Yang makes an annoyed sound.

“Come on, Belladonna,” Yang says, suddenly full of charm and swagger like always, one eyebrow lifting and her mouth following it into a smile. “You can do better than that.”

A laugh bursts out of Blake before she realizes it’s coming, her mouth settling into a smile, the first smile she can remember in days. Yang grins up at her and for one brief, shining moment, Blake forgets that they’re in a hospital, that Yang is hurt so badly, that Blake had nearly run away from this yet again. She follows the weak tug on her hands that Yang offers and leans forward, pulls one hand free until she can curl it along Yang’s jaw and press a kiss to her cracked lips.

“Promise me you’re staying,” Yang says against her lips. 

“I promise,” Blake says softly, and she means it. She smiles into it when Yang kisses her again. 

There’s a soft sound from the doorway, and Blake jerks back to see a nurse standing there, Weiss and Ruby behind her, and flushes and clears her throat. 

“Sorry,” she mumbles, straightening up but not letting go of Yang’s hand. 

“Hey, y’all,” Yang says, clearly aiming for cocky but landing somewhere short of it when she starts coughing and then lets out a groan. “Someone please give me drugs.”

Blake laughs, soft and calm, and swipes at her eyes again. Yang’s hand stays wrapped around her own until the nurse shoos Blake away, and Blake presses another kiss to her knuckles before stepping out of the way and over to the doorway. Ruby’s eyes are shining and she slips a hand into Blake’s, and Weiss reaches for her other hand, and Blake closes her eyes and breathes in deep, exhales, and stays right where she is. 


	8. epilogue

> _tactical ventilation_ : venting actions by on-scene firefighters, used to gain control of a fire building's internal environment to the advantage of firefighting and rescue teams working within.

Blake stays, and Yang is discharged from the hospital, and the three of them are called back to work. There’s a moment, when the emails hit their phones on their way back to the apartment complex, that all three of them start to protest in unison, but Yang scoffs and waves her uninjured arm with a frown. 

“No way,” she says, firm even though her voice still crackles from the amount of smoke she’d inhaled, even now weeks later. “I’ll be fine.”

“But--” Blake starts, hands itching to reach for her, to hold onto her and not leave her side for an hour, much less the length of an entire on-call shift at a time. 

“Nope,” Yang says, popping the _p_. “I know you want to play doctor, but I have Weiss’s girlfriend for that.”

“Hey,” Weiss says indignantly, nearly drowned out by the disgusted yelp from Ruby. 

“Don’t worry, princess,” Yang says with a grin that’s undercut by a hacking cough that peters off into a groan when it jostles her right arm. Her free hand digs into Blake’s, squeezing through the pain until Blake’s bones creak, but Blake bites down on her lip and stay quiet. “I promise not to seduce you super amazing world famous athlete girlfriend with my super sexy muscles and sexier burn dressings.”

“I should hope not,” Weiss sniffs.

“I feel like I should also be offended here,” Blake says, playing with Yang’s fingers absently. 

“You’re the only person I want to play doctor with, I promise,” Yang says, wiggling her eyebrows and grinning widely. Blake’s pulse trips over itself, half like it always does when Yang turns the full force of her charm towards Blake and half because she’s still drowning in disbelief that she’s still here, that Yang still wants her. 

“Gross!” Ruby yells from the front seat. “Stop it!”

“Don’t yell at me, I’m wounded,” Yang throws back at her. Ruby turns around from the passenger seat to glare at her, and Yang immediately grabs Blake by the collar and drags her over until she can kiss her and make Ruby yelp and slam back to facing forward.

“If you three don’t behave we’re going to crash,” Weiss says huffily from the driver’s seat. 

“Like you'd let anything mar your spotless driving record,” Blake says, pulling back just far enough from Yang to speak before leaning back in and pressing a kiss to the corner of her mouth before settling back into her seat.

There’s still caution tape segmenting off Ruby and Yang’s apartment. In the weeks since Yang woke up, Blake and Weiss had gone through the whole apartment after it was cleared and packed up everything that was left. Blake hadn’t been able to cross into Yang’s room, where the floor was charred to nothing and the drywall burned away, the ceiling scorched and the rear wall Yang had escaped through torn down by firefighters during the clean up; Weiss had kicked her way through the rubble and dug out anything salvageable-- the clothes in the half of the dresser that didn’t burn up, the kettlebell set she kept under her windows, the half-full laundry hamper in the bathroom that had been saved only by a closed door-- to pack up into boxes until Yang and Ruby found a new place.

Yang lets Blake help her out of the car and stands unmoving next to it for long moments, staring over to what’s left of hers and Ruby’s home, the shell of an apartment that they had lived in. Her fingers wind between Blake’s automatically, finding her blindly at her side, and Blake presses a kiss to her shoulder. 

“Come on, don’t be gross,” Ruby says with a huff. She has a duffel bag with Yang’s clothes hanging from one shoulder, leftover from Yang’s insistence that she wouldn’t walk out of the hospital in scrubs and that Ruby needed to bring her a selection of what’s left of her wardrobe to choose from. 

“You’re just jealous I have a super hot girlfriend,” Yang informs her, even as she lets go of Blake’s hand so she can drag Ruby closer and ruffle her hair.

“Gross,” Ruby repeats, even as she leans into Yang for a moment. Blake warms, despite the overcast day and the fall chill in the air, because things aren’t set right yet-- the police have the fire department’s report in hand proving arson and Adam was arrested boarding a bus in Billings two days ago and the trial won’t start for weeks at the soonest; Yang’s doctors are optimistic but there’s still months and months of recovery ahead of her-- but they’re _good_. 

Yang’s recovery will be based out of Blake’s apartment until they find a new place for her and Ruby, and everyone will cycle through as necessary to be her right hand, someone always there and the rest of them in Weiss’s apartment raiding kitchen full of expensive food. Blake’s back on the jump team with Weiss and Ruby, Yang’s spot filled by one of Yatsu’s boot camp buddies from the Yellowstone base until the fire season wraps. The four of them are going to Austria in January, at Weiss’s insistence, to watch Pyrrha in the world championships. Yang’s hand is tangled with hers again and Blake’s isn’t sure how she’s going to be able to leave her side to go on call, but she knows that she’s staying right here.

* * *

Blake stays, and Christmas comes and she follows Yang and Ruby home to Sacramento. She meets their parents and their dog, and sleeps in the bedroom Yang grew up in, curled into Yang’s side, and trades presents with them on Christmas morning and they all call Weiss and mock her endlessly when it’s clear they interrupted her and Pyrrha. 

The district attorney from Missoula calls her the day after New Year’s to tell her that Adam’s refused a plea deal and is going to trial in February. His chances aren’t good. Blake hangs up the phone and lays back down into Yang’s bed, curling around her carefully and pushing her face into the space between Yang’s shoulder blades as she sleeps. 

“You okay?” Yang mumbles, still mostly asleep. 

“Yeah.” Blake kisses her shoulderblade and smiles against her shirt. “I’m okay.”

* * *

Blake stays, and winter fades away. Adam’s trial comes, and Blake sits through every day of it with her hand locked tight around Yang’s. She’s not called as a witness-- the absurdly expensive lawyer Weiss hired specifically to make sure that not even the DA could call her sees to that-- but she shows up every day and listens while Adam’s attorney tries to convince the jury that she’s to blame, that Yang is to blame, that everyone but Adam is to blame. She goes home to her apartment every day with Yang and kisses her the minute they step through the door, pushes her face into Yang’s shoulder and holds on tight and tells herself that Adam can’t hurt them anymore.

The trial ends, and Adam is weighed for his crimes-- arson and stalking and assault, a whole plethora of violence and intimidation-- and found guilty. He’ll be in jail until he’s seventy. Blake cries after the sentencing, but it’s not like when she cried after her showed up in Missoula, heavy and wracking and burdened with guilt and terror; she cries quietly and smiles in spite of it, holding onto Weiss with one hand and Yang with the other, Ruby on Yang’s other side with a hand curled into Yang’s healing right hand.

He lost, and Blake won. She kisses Yang’s hand, her cheek, her mouth, presses her forehead against Yang’s and kisses her again as Adam’s led away in cuffs. 

“It’s done,” Yang says softly against her lips, and kisses her again, quick and fleeting. “He’s gone.”

Blake nods and turns more fully into her, tangles her hand into the hair on the back of Yang’s head when her forehead pushes into Blake’s shoulder. Ruby sits on Yang’s other side and smiles at her, wide and warm, and Blake nods and holds onto Yang tighter.

* * *

Blake stays, and the next fire season starts. Two hours into their first shift of the year, dispatch calls in when Blake’s tying her shoes and about to head out on a run with Weiss, and she rolls her eyes and turns around, follows Weiss to the gear room.

There’s a new batch of rookies at the base, and Yatsu’s heading up a team of three of them. Blake takes her seat on the plane and bumps a fist against Ruby’s, grins at Weiss, rolls her eyes when Yang flashes a heart and a wink at her from the other side of the plane. 

The spotter drops the streamers and then the crate, and Blake crams her helmet on. She’s between Yang and Ruby in the line to drop out, and she watches as Yang grips at her right arm through her kevlar when the door opens, reaches forward and covers her gloved hand with her own. Yang glances back at her, eyes sparking bright through the cage of her helmet, and mouths _I love you_.

When she joined the smokejumpers, she had nothing, just a lifetime of guilt to make up for and a need to do more good than the harm of her past. Now she has Yang and the small house they’re renting together next door to the one Weiss bought and Ruby moved into without asking, only leaving when Pyrrha shows up whenever her schedule allows it, a partner and a team and a family. 

When she joined, she had nothing. Blake watches Yang leap out of the plane and counts, breathes, follows. Air rushes by her, the smoke of a growing wildfire cresting the treeline, the trees reaching up to catch her as her chute deploys and Yang letting out a whoop of delight that’s barely audible but that Blake would recognize anywhere, and Blake smiles. She crashes down through the trees and lands in a roll, popping up to her feet to see Yang to her left, Weiss and Ruby landing to her left, and she smiles wider, because when she came here she had nothing, and now she has everything. 

**Author's Note:**

> Reminder to go [here](https://turgles-art.tumblr.com/post/634231958808985600/heres-my-piece-for-the-bumblebybigbang-my#notes) with me to yell praises at [turgles-art](https://turgles-art.tumblr.com/) for really pulling this whole monstrosity together with her fantastic artwork!


End file.
